Autosuggest API v7 reference

Warning

Bing Search APIs are moving from Cognitive Services to Bing Search Services. Starting October 30, 2020, any new instances of Bing Search need to be provisioned following the process documented here. Bing Search APIs provisioned using Cognitive Services will be supported for the next three years or until the end of your Enterprise Agreement, whichever happens first. For migration instructions, see Bing Search Services.

The Autosuggest API lets you send a partial search query term to Bing and get back a list of suggested queries that other users have searched on. In addition to including searches made by others, the list may include suggestions based on user intent.

Typically, you use this API to support a richer search box experience. For example, as the user enters each character of their search term, you'd call this API and populate the search box's drop-down list with the suggested query strings.

This section provides technical details about the query parameters and headers that the request may include, and the JSON response that contains the suggested queries. For examples that show how to make requests, see Getting suggested search terms.

For information about the headers that you should include in the request, see Request Headers.

For information about the query parameters that you should include in the request, see Query Parameters.

For information about the JSON objects that the response may include, see Response Objects.

For information about permitted use and display of results, see Bing Search API Use and Display requirements.

Note

Because URL formats and parameters are subject to change without notice, use all URLs as-is. You should not take dependencies on the URL format or parameters except where noted.

Endpoint

To request query suggestions, send a GET request to:

https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v7.0/suggestions

For multi-service subscriptions, you must include the region in the URL. For example: westus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com. See Supported Regions.

The request must use the HTTPS protocol.

Note

The maximum URL length is 2,048 characters. To ensure that your URL length does not exceed the limit, the maximum length of your query parameters should be less than 1,500 characters. If the URL exceeds 2,048 characters, the server returns 404 Not found.

Headers

The following are the headers that a request and response may include.

Header	Description
Accept	Optional request header. The default media type is application/json. To specify that the response use JSON-LD, set the Accept header to application/ld+json.
Accept-Language	Optional request header. A comma-delimited list of languages to use for user interface strings. The list is in decreasing order of preference. For more information, including expected format, see RFC2616. This header and the setLang query parameter are mutually exclusive—do not specify both. If you set this header, you must also specify the cc query parameter. To determine the market to return results for, Bing uses the first supported language it finds from the list and combines it with the cc parameter value. If the list does not include a supported language, Bing finds the closest language and market that supports the request or it uses an aggregated or default market for the results. To determine the market that Bing used, see the BingAPIs-Market header. Use this header and the cc query parameter only if you specify multiple languages. Otherwise, use the mkt and setLang query parameters. A user interface string is a string that's used as a label in a user interface. There are few user interface strings in the JSON response objects. Any links to Bing.com properties in the response objects apply the specified language.
BingAPIs-Market	Response header. The market used by the request. The form is <languageCode>-<countryCode>. For example, en-US. If you specify a market that is not listed in Market Codes, this value may differ from the market you specified in the mkt query parameter. The same is true if you specify values for cc and Accept-Language that can't be reconciled.
BingAPIs-TraceId	Response header. The ID of the log entry that contains the details of the request. When an error occurs, capture this ID. If you are not able to determine and resolve the issue, include this ID along with the other information that you provide the Support team.
Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key	Required request header. The subscription key that you received when you signed up for this service in Cognitive Services.
Pragma	Optional request header By default, Bing returns cached content, if available. To prevent cached content, set the Pragma header to no-cache (for example, Pragma: no-cache).
Retry-After	Response header. The response includes this header if you exceed the number of queries allowed per second (QPS) or per month (QPM). The header contains the number of seconds that you must wait before sending another request.
User-Agent	Optional request header. The user agent originating the request. Bing uses the user agent to provide mobile users with an optimized experience. Although optional, you are encouraged to always specify this header. The user-agent should be the same string that any commonly used browser sends. For information about user agents, see RFC 2616. The following are examples of user-agent strings. Windows Phone—Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows Phone 8.0; Trident/6.0; IEMobile/10.0; ARM; Touch; NOKIA; Lumia 822) Android—Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.5; en-us; SCH-I500 Build/GINGERBREAD) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML; like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1 iPhone—Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML; like Gecko) Mobile/10B142 iPhone4;1 BingWeb/3.03.1428.20120423 PC—Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; Trident/7.0; Touch; rv:11.0) like Gecko iPad—Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 7_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11A465 Safari/9537.53
X-MSEdge-ClientID	Optional request and response header. Bing uses this header to provide users with consistent behavior across Bing API calls. Bing often flights new features and improvements, and it uses the client ID as a key for assigning traffic on different flights. If you do not use the same client ID for a user across multiple requests, then Bing may assign the user to multiple conflicting flights. Being assigned to multiple conflicting flights can lead to an inconsistent user experience. For example, if the second request has a different flight assignment than the first, the experience may be unexpected. Also, Bing can use the client ID to tailor web results to that client ID's search history, providing a richer experience for the user. Bing also uses this header to help improve result rankings by analyzing the activity generated by a client ID. The relevance improvements help with better quality of results delivered by Bing APIs and in turn enables higher click-through rates for the API consumer. IMPORTANT: Although optional, you should consider this header required. Persisting the client ID across multiple requests for the same end user and device combination enables 1) the API consumer to receive a consistent user experience, and 2) higher click-through rates via better quality of results from the Bing APIs. The following are the basic usage rules that apply to this header. Each user that uses your application on the device must have a unique, Bing generated client ID. If you do not include this header in the request, Bing generates an ID and returns it in the X-MSEdge-ClientID response header. The only time that you should NOT include this header in a request is the first time the user uses your app on that device. Use the client ID for each Bing API request that your app makes for this user on the device. ATTENTION: You must ensure that this Client ID is not linkable to any authenticatable user account information. Persist the client ID. To persist the ID in a browser app, use a persistent HTTP cookie to ensure the ID is used across all sessions. Do not use a session cookie. For other apps such as mobile apps, use the device's persistent storage to persist the ID. The next time the user uses your app on that device, get the client ID that you persisted. NOTE: Bing responses may or may not include this header. If the response includes this header, capture the client ID and use it for all subsequent Bing requests for the user on that device. NOTE: If you include the X-MSEdge-ClientID, you must not include cookies in the request.
X-MSEdge-ClientIP	Optional request header. The IPv4 or IPv6 address of the client device. The IP address is used to discover the user's location. Bing uses the location information to determine safe search behavior. NOTE: Although optional, you are encouraged to always specify this header and the X-Search-Location header. Do not obfuscate the address (for example, by changing the last octet to 0). Obfuscating the address results in the location not being anywhere near the device's actual location, which may result in Bing serving erroneous results.
X-Search-Location	Optional request header. A semicolon-delimited list of key/value pairs that describe the client's geographical location. Bing uses the location information to determine safe search behavior and to return relevant local content. Specify the key/value pair as <key>:<value>. The following are the keys that you use to specify the user's location. lat—Required. The latitude of the client's location, in degrees. The latitude must be greater than or equal to -90.0 and less than or equal to +90.0. Negative values indicate southern latitudes and positive values indicate northern latitudes. long—Required. The longitude of the client's location, in degrees. The longitude must be greater than or equal to -180.0 and less than or equal to +180.0. Negative values indicate western longitudes and positive values indicate eastern longitudes. re—Required. The radius, in meters, which specifies the horizontal accuracy of the coordinates. Pass the value returned by the device's location service. Typical values might be 22m for GPS/Wi-Fi, 380m for cell tower triangulation, and 18,000m for reverse IP lookup. ts—Optional. The UTC UNIX timestamp of when the client was at the location. (The UNIX timestamp is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970.) head—Optional. The client's relative heading or direction of travel. Specify the direction of travel as degrees from 0 through 360, counting clockwise relative to true north. Specify this key only if the sp key is nonzero. sp—Optional. The horizontal velocity (speed), in meters per second, that the client device is traveling. alt—Optional. The altitude of the client device, in meters. are—Optional. The radius, in meters, that specifies the vertical accuracy of the coordinates. Specify this key only if you specify the alt key. disp—Optional. The user's geographic location in the form, disp:<City, State>. For example, disp:Seattle, Washington. This is the display text version of the user's location that you specified using the lat/long keys. If this value conflicts with the lat/long coordinates, Bing uses the disp value as the user's location. NOTE: Bing ignores this header if the query includes a location. For example, if this header reflects the user's location as San Francisco, but the query is restaurants seattle, Bing returns restaurants located in Seattle, Washington. NOTE: Although many of the keys are optional, the more information that you provide, the more accurate the location results are. NOTE: Although optional, you are encouraged to always specify the user's geographical location. Providing the location is especially important if the client's IP address does not accurately reflect the user's physical location (for example, if the client uses VPN). For optimal results, you should include this header and the X-Search-ClientIP header, but at a minimum, you should include this header.

Note

Remember that the Terms of Use require compliance with all applicable laws, including regarding use of these headers. For example, in certain jurisdictions, such as Europe, there are requirements to obtain user consent before placing certain tracking devices on user devices.

Query parameters

The following are the query parameters that the request may include. The Required column indicates whether you must specify the parameter. You must URL encode the query parameter values.

Name	Value	Type	Required
cc	A 2-character country code of the country where the results come from. For a list of possible values, see Market Codes. If you set this parameter, you must also specify the Accept-Language header. Bing uses the first supported language it finds in the specified languages and combines it with the country code to determine the market to return results for. If the languages list does not include a supported language, Bing finds the closest language and market that supports the request. Or, Bing may use an aggregated or default market for the results. Use this query parameter and the Accept-Language header only if you specify multiple languages. Otherwise, you should use the mkt and setLang query parameters. This parameter and the mkt query parameter are mutually exclusive—do not specify both.	String	No
mkt	The market where the results come from. Typically, mkt is the country where the user is making the request from. However, it could be a different country if the user is not located in a country where Bing delivers results. The market must be in the form <language code>-<country code>. For example, en-US. The string is case insensitive. For a list of possible market values, see Market Codes. NOTE: If known, you are encouraged to always specify the market. Specifying the market helps Bing route the request and return an appropriate and optimal response. If you specify a market that is not listed in Market Codes, Bing uses a best fit market code based on an internal mapping that is subject to change. This parameter and the cc query parameter are mutually exclusive—do not specify both.	String	No
q	The user's search query string. The query string must not be empty. If empty or not specified, the list of suggestions in the response is empty. The API does not support the Bing Advanced Operators. If the query string includes Bing operators, the operators are treated as part of the query string, not as an operator.	String	No
setLang	The language to use for user interface strings. You may specify the language using either a 2-letter or 4-letter code. Using 4-letter codes is preferred. For a list of supported language codes, see Bing supported languages. Bing loads the localized strings if setlang contains a valid 2-letter neutral culture code (fr) or a valid 4-letter specific culture code (fr-ca). For example, for fr-ca, Bing loads the fr neutral culture code strings. If setlang is not valid (for example, zh) or Bing doesn't support the language (for example, af, af-na), Bing defaults to en (English). To specify the 2-letter code, set this parameter to an ISO 639-1 language code. To specify the 4-letter code, use the form <language>-<country/region> where <language> is an ISO 639-1 language code (neutral culture) and <country/region> is an ISO 3166 country/region (specific culture) code. For example, use en-US for United States English. Although optional, you should always specify the language. Typically, you set setLang to the same language specified by mkt unless the user wants the user interface strings displayed in a different language. This parameter and the Accept-Language header are mutually exclusive—do not specify both. A user interface string is a string that's used as a label in a user interface. There are few user interface strings in the JSON response objects. Also, any links to Bing.com properties in the response objects apply the specified language.	String	No

Response objects

The following are the JSON objects that the response may include. If the request is successful, the top-level object in the response is the Suggestions object. If the request fails, the top-level object is ErrorResponse.

Object	Description
Error	Defines the error that occurred.
ErrorResponse	The top-level object that the response includes when the request fails.
QueryContext	Defines the query term that Bing used for the request.
SearchAction	Defines the suggested search query.
SuggestionGroup	Defines a group of suggestions of the same type.
Suggestions	The top-level object that the response includes when the request succeeds.

Error

Defines the error that occurred.

Element	Description	Type
code	The error code that identifies the category of error. For a list of possible codes, see Error Codes.	String
message	A description of the error.	String
moreDetails	A description that provides additional information about the error.	String
parameter	The query parameter in the request that caused the error.	String
subCode	The error code that identifies the error. For example, if code is InvalidRequest, subCode may be ParameterInvalid or ParameterInvalidValue.	String
value	The query parameter's value that was not valid.	String

ErrorResponse

The top-level object that the response includes when the request fails.

Name	Value	Type
_type	Type hint.	String
errors	A list of errors that describe the reasons why the request failed.	Error[]

QueryContext

Defines the query term that Bing used for the request.

Element	Description	Type
adultIntent	Not used.	Boolean
alterationOverrideQuery	Not used.	String
alteredQuery	Not used.	String
askUserForLocation	Not used.	String
originalQuery	The user's query term.	String

SearchAction

Defines a query search suggestion.

Name	Value	Type
displayText	The suggested query term to display in a user interface.	String
query	The suggested query term. If the user selects the query term from the list of suggestions, use the term in a Bing API request and display the search results yourself. Or, use the URL in the url field to send the user to the Bing search results page for the suggested query.	String
searchKind	The type of suggestion. The following are the possible values. CustomSearch—The suggestion is from a non-Web search suggestion data source. WebSearch—The suggestion is from a web search suggestion data source.	String
url	The URL that takes the user to the Bing search results page for the suggested query.	String

SuggestionGroup

Defines a group of suggestions of the same type.

Name	Value	Type
name	The name of the group. The name identifies the type of suggestions that the group contains. For example, web search suggestions. The following are the possible group names. Custom—The group contains suggestions from a non-web search suggestions data source. Web—The group contains web search suggestions.	String
searchSuggestions	A list of up to 8 suggestions. If there are no suggestions, the array is empty. You must display all suggestions in the order provided. The list is in order of decreasing relevance. The first suggestion is the most relevant and the last suggestion is the least relevant. The size of the list is subject to change.	SearchAction[]

Suggestions

The top-level object that the response includes when the request succeeds.

If the service suspects a denial of service attack, the request succeeds (HTTP status code is 200 OK). However, the body of the response is empty.

Name	Value	Type
_type	The type hint, which is set to Suggestions.	String
queryContext	The user's query string.	QueryContext
suggestionGroups	A list of suggested query strings grouped by type. For example, web search suggestions.	SuggestionGroup[]

Error codes

The following are the possible HTTP status codes that a request returns.

Status Code	Description
200	Success.
400	One of the query parameters is missing or not valid.
401	The subscription key is missing or is not valid.
403	The user is authenticated (for example, they used a valid subscription key) but they don’t have permission to the requested resource. Bing may also return this status if the caller exceeded their queries per month quota.
410	The request used HTTP instead of the HTTPS protocol. HTTPS is the only supported protocol.
429	The caller exceeded their queries per second quota.
500	Unexpected server error.

If the request fails, the response contains an ErrorResponse object, which contains a list of Error objects that describe what caused of error. If the error is related to a parameter, the parameter field identifies the parameter that is the issue. And if the error is related to a parameter value, the value field identifies the value that is not valid.

{
  "_type": "ErrorResponse", 
  "errors": [
    {
      "code": "InvalidRequest", 
      "subCode": "ParameterMissing", 
      "message": "Required parameter is missing.", 
      "parameter": "q" 
    }
  ]
}

{
  "_type": "ErrorResponse", 
  "errors": [
    {
      "code": "InvalidAuthorization", 
      "subCode": "AuthorizationMissing", 
      "message": "Authorization is required.", 
      "moreDetails": "Subscription key is not recognized."
    }
  ]
}

The following are the possible error code and sub-error code values.

Code	SubCode	Description
ServerError	UnexpectedError ResourceError NotImplemented	HTTP status code is 500.
InvalidRequest	ParameterMissing ParameterInvalidValue HttpNotAllowed Blocked	Bing returns InvalidRequest whenever any part of the request is not valid. For example, a required parameter is missing or a parameter value is not valid. If the error is ParameterMissing or ParameterInvalidValue, the HTTP status code is 400. If you use the HTTP protocol instead of HTTPS, Bing returns HttpNotAllowed, and the HTTP status code is 410.
RateLimitExceeded	No sub-codes	Bing returns RateLimitExceeded whenever you exceed your queries per second (QPS) or queries per month (QPM) quota. If you exceed QPS, Bing returns HTTP status code 429, and if you exceed QPM, Bing returns 403.
InvalidAuthorization	AuthorizationMissing AuthorizationRedundancy	Bing returns InvalidAuthorization when Bing cannot authenticate the caller. For example, the Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header is missing or the subscription key is not valid. Redundancy occurs if you specify more than one authentication method. If the error is InvalidAuthorization, the HTTP status code is 401.
InsufficientAuthorization	AuthorizationDisabled AuthorizationExpired	Bing returns InsufficientAuthorization when the caller does not have permissions to access the resource. This can occur if the subscription key has been disabled or has expired. If the error is InsufficientAuthorization, the HTTP status code is 403.

Market codes

The following table lists the market code values that you may use to specify the mkt query parameter. Bing returns content for only these markets. The list is subject to change.

For a list of country codes that you may specify in the cc query parameter, see Country codes.

Country/Region	Language	Market code
Argentina	Spanish	es-AR
Australia	English	en-AU
Austria	German	de-AT
Belgium	Dutch	nl-BE
Belgium	French	fr-BE
Brazil	Portuguese	pt-BR
Canada	English	en-CA
Canada	French	fr-CA
Chile	Spanish	es-CL
Denmark	Danish	da-DK
Finland	Finnish	fi-FI
France	French	fr-FR
Germany	German	de-DE
Hong Kong SAR	Traditional Chinese	zh-HK
India	English	en-IN
Indonesia	English	en-ID
Italy	Italian	it-IT
Japan	Japanese	ja-JP
Korea	Korean	ko-KR
Malaysia	English	en-MY
Mexico	Spanish	es-MX
Netherlands	Dutch	nl-NL
New Zealand	English	en-NZ
Norway	Norwegian	no-NO
People's republic of China	Chinese	zh-CN
Poland	Polish	pl-PL
Republic of the Philippines	English	en-PH
Russia	Russian	ru-RU
South Africa	English	en-ZA
Spain	Spanish	es-ES
Sweden	Swedish	sv-SE
Switzerland	French	fr-CH
Switzerland	German	de-CH
Taiwan	Traditional Chinese	zh-TW
Turkey	Turkish	tr-TR
United Kingdom	English	en-GB
United States	English	en-US
United States	Spanish	es-US

Country codes

The following are the country codes that you may specify in the cc query parameter. The list is subject to change.

Country/Region	Country Code
Argentina	AR
Australia	AU
Austria	AT
Belgium	BE
Brazil	BR
Canada	CA
Chile	CL
Denmark	DK
Finland	FI
France	FR
Germany	DE
Hong Kong SAR	HK
India	IN
Indonesia	ID
Italy	IT
Japan	JP
Korea	KR
Malaysia	MY
Mexico	MX
Netherlands	NL
New Zealand	NZ
Norway	NO
People's Republic of China	CN
Poland	PL
Portugal	PT
Republic of the Philippines	PH
Russia	RU
Saudi Arabia	SA
South Africa	ZA
Spain	ES
Sweden	SE
Switzerland	CH
Taiwan	TW
Turkey	TR
United Kingdom	GB
United States	US

Bing supported languages

The following are the Bing supported languages that you may specify in the setLang query parameter. The list is subject to change.

Supported Languages	Language Code
Arabic	ar
Basque	eu
Bengali	bn
Bulgarian	bg
Catalan	ca
Chinese (Simplified)	zh-hans
Chinese (Traditional)	zh-hant
Croatian	hr
Czech	cs
Danish​	da
Dutch​	nl
English	en
English-United Kingdom	en-gb
Estonian	et
Finnish	fi
French	fr
Galician	gl
German	de
Gujarati	gu
Hebrew	he
Hindi	hi
Hungarian	hu
Icelandic	is
Italian	it
Japanese	jp
Kannada	kn
Korean	ko
Latvian	lv
Lithuanian	lt
Malay	ms
Malayalam	ml
Marathi	mr
Norwegian (Bokmål)	nb
Polish​	pl
Portuguese (Brazil)​	pt-br
Portuguese (Portugal)​	pt-pt
Punjabi​	pa
Romanian	ro
Russian	ru
Serbian (Cyrylic)	sr
Slovak​	sk
Slovenian​	sl
Spanish	es
Swedish	sv
Tamil	ta
Telugu	te
Thai	th
Turkish	tr
Ukrainian	uk
Vietnamese	vi