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Bing is still poor for obscure searches, e.g. today Im searching for other poor folks dealing with ebay's API and the message "Invalid store category name" in q

Bing is still poor for obscure searches, e.g. today Im searching for other poor folks dealing with ebay's API and the message "Invalid store category name" in quotes. Bing 0, DuckDuckGo 0, Google plenty. Reality is most of my tech searches are like this and hence I can't give up Google, or I can at cost of either my time or my clients. It be nice to have another search engine with depth of Google but nothing comes close, it's like the old days of Yahoo directory vs AltaVista, you could never find the serialz on Yahoo.

throwawaykf09 9y ago
While Bing was poor for tech related searches in the earlier days, I find it's no longer true. Are you sure it’s 0 results on Bing? I get a bunch of relevant-looking results, and they’re all different from what Google gave me (just the first page): https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Invalid+store+category+name%22 https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Invalid+store+category+name... Some weird personalization thing? Interested in seeing what others see when they click that link...
- TimonKnigge 9y ago
  I get no results following your link.
  - isolli 9y ago
    Me neither...
  - irishsultan 9y ago
    I got no results either, then I decided to switch my country/region to US English which resulted in a lot of results. Rather strange to localize results so much (especially when the alternatives are showing many results vs. showing no results)
- thomasahle 9y ago
  Maybe Bing is still doing this: http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914 http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-... In that case, the hacker news interest would probably get the page included in Bing, but it would take some time before everyone would start seeing it.
  - throwawaykf09 9y ago
    Did you try the search on both Bing and Google? Looked very different for Bing and Google. Also, that accusation was purely a PR play by Google that IMO Bing refuted convincingly: http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-accusations-63279 http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-ac...
    - bduerst 9y ago
      > was purely a PR play Bing said they were using internet explorer to monitor users's activity and copy search results. They're still copying Google search results, just doing it through IE.
      - kappel 9y ago
        When did tracking users become equivalent to copying Google search results?
        wdr1 9y ago
        Watching what a user types into Google & using the Google result is pretty much textbook copying.
- Duckton 9y ago
  I get one result
- zeep 9y ago
  I also get a bunch of results using this query on Bing, but the first result with the exact query is #5. You need to add a "+" in front of the quotation marks to get an exact result in Bing: https://www.bing.com/search?q=%2B"Invalid+store+category+name" https://www.bing.com/search?q=%2B"Invalid+store+category+nam.... I wonder why you don't get the same result in DDG since they are supposed to be pulling results from Bing (that 1 results is from April 5th, so not very recent)? Using Google, I only get 2 results, so it is not much better...
- xiconfjs 9y ago
  'No results found for "Invalid store category name".'
- mediocrejoker 9y ago
  I get a result from wordpress.org followed by at least 4-5 from ebay's various domains.
benjaminjackman 9y ago
When I tried I got 2 results on Google, with about 7 if I selected the option to show duplicate results. Is that what you saw? The results were all on eBay's developer forums, maybe their robots file only allows google? One advantage to DuckDuckGo is that when searching it was fairly easy to flip and try google with !g and bing with !b after getting no results on DDG.* It would be nice if bing/google got that feature since it's really handy, and it would be exceedingly nice if they all got the ability to add custom user defined !bang commands. *However, annoyingly, there was a bug on ddg on iPhone that would clear the search input box when it was clicked to add !g then another error when clicking in the location bar to add the !g that the '"invalid store category name" !g' query was no longer editable instead it was the URL of the encrypted Google search making it difficult to remove the !g and add the !b.
- thomasahle 9y ago
  > maybe their robots file only allows google? It's pretty easy to check: https://forums.developer.ebay.com/robots.txt https://forums.developer.ebay.com/robots.txt Sitemap: /sitemap.xml User-Agent: sitebot Disallow: / User-Agent: * Disallow: /accounts/ Disallow: /users/ Disallow: /revisions/ Disallow: /search Disallow: /*sort=newest Disallow: /*sort=hottest Disallow: /*sort=votes Disallow: /commands/ Disallow: /badges/ Disallow: /comments Disallow: /storage/ Doesn't seem like anything disallows https://forums.developer.ebay.com/questions/20235/listing-items-in-store-subcategory-by-name-no-cate.html https://forums.developer.ebay.com/questions/20235/listing-it...
lettergram 9y ago
What are you talking about? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Invalid+store+category+name&t=hf&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Invalid+store+category+name&t=hf&i... It popped right up on DuckDuckGo. I admit I revert to Google for some searches, but 99%+ of the time DuckDuckGo works great. I think the real difference between the searches are Google looks at he context per user. They have the most data and thus the best searches. At the same time I view that as a threat to sovereignty of nation(s), so for me avoiding Google is worth almost any cost.
- sitepodmatt 9y ago
  Quote it. Im looking for the exact error message.
Aloraman 9y ago
I've got three results (rover.ebay.*) from DuckDuckGo when I turned on region search. In every region, except "All Regions" and "United States". Yes, even in "United States (es)" there are 3 english results, but not in "United States"

throwawaykf09 9y ago

While Bing was poor for tech related searches in the earlier days, I find it's no longer true. Are you sure it’s 0 results on Bing? I get a bunch of relevant-looking results, and they’re all different from what Google gave me (just the first page): https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Invalid+store+category+name%22 https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22Invalid+store+category+name... Some weird personalization thing? Interested in seeing what others see when they click that link...

TimonKnigge 9y ago
I get no results following your link.
- isolli 9y ago
  Me neither...
- irishsultan 9y ago
  I got no results either, then I decided to switch my country/region to US English which resulted in a lot of results. Rather strange to localize results so much (especially when the alternatives are showing many results vs. showing no results)
thomasahle 9y ago
Maybe Bing is still doing this: http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914 http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-... In that case, the hacker news interest would probably get the page included in Bing, but it would take some time before everyone would start seeing it.
- throwawaykf09 9y ago
  Did you try the search on both Bing and Google? Looked very different for Bing and Google. Also, that accusation was purely a PR play by Google that IMO Bing refuted convincingly: http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-accusations-63279 http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-ac...
  - bduerst 9y ago
    > was purely a PR play Bing said they were using internet explorer to monitor users's activity and copy search results. They're still copying Google search results, just doing it through IE.
    - kappel 9y ago
      When did tracking users become equivalent to copying Google search results?
      - wdr1 9y ago
        Watching what a user types into Google & using the Google result is pretty much textbook copying.
Duckton 9y ago
I get one result
zeep 9y ago
I also get a bunch of results using this query on Bing, but the first result with the exact query is #5. You need to add a "+" in front of the quotation marks to get an exact result in Bing: https://www.bing.com/search?q=%2B"Invalid+store+category+name" https://www.bing.com/search?q=%2B"Invalid+store+category+nam.... I wonder why you don't get the same result in DDG since they are supposed to be pulling results from Bing (that 1 results is from April 5th, so not very recent)? Using Google, I only get 2 results, so it is not much better...
xiconfjs 9y ago
'No results found for "Invalid store category name".'
mediocrejoker 9y ago
I get a result from wordpress.org followed by at least 4-5 from ebay's various domains.

benjaminjackman 9y ago

When I tried I got 2 results on Google, with about 7 if I selected the option to show duplicate results. Is that what you saw? The results were all on eBay's developer forums, maybe their robots file only allows google? One advantage to DuckDuckGo is that when searching it was fairly easy to flip and try google with !g and bing with !b after getting no results on DDG.* It would be nice if bing/google got that feature since it's really handy, and it would be exceedingly nice if they all got the ability to add custom user defined !bang commands. *However, annoyingly, there was a bug on ddg on iPhone that would clear the search input box when it was clicked to add !g then another error when clicking in the location bar to add the !g that the '"invalid store category name" !g' query was no longer editable instead it was the URL of the encrypted Google search making it difficult to remove the !g and add the !b.

thomasahle 9y ago
> maybe their robots file only allows google? It's pretty easy to check: https://forums.developer.ebay.com/robots.txt https://forums.developer.ebay.com/robots.txt Sitemap: /sitemap.xml User-Agent: sitebot Disallow: / User-Agent: * Disallow: /accounts/ Disallow: /users/ Disallow: /revisions/ Disallow: /search Disallow: /*sort=newest Disallow: /*sort=hottest Disallow: /*sort=votes Disallow: /commands/ Disallow: /badges/ Disallow: /comments Disallow: /storage/ Doesn't seem like anything disallows https://forums.developer.ebay.com/questions/20235/listing-items-in-store-subcategory-by-name-no-cate.html https://forums.developer.ebay.com/questions/20235/listing-it...

lettergram 9y ago

What are you talking about? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Invalid+store+category+name&t=hf&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Invalid+store+category+name&t=hf&i... It popped right up on DuckDuckGo. I admit I revert to Google for some searches, but 99%+ of the time DuckDuckGo works great. I think the real difference between the searches are Google looks at he context per user. They have the most data and thus the best searches. At the same time I view that as a threat to sovereignty of nation(s), so for me avoiding Google is worth almost any cost.

sitepodmatt 9y ago
Quote it. Im looking for the exact error message.

Aloraman 9y ago

I've got three results (rover.ebay.*) from DuckDuckGo when I turned on region search. In every region, except "All Regions" and "United States". Yes, even in "United States (es)" there are 3 english results, but not in "United States"