Why do I have loose results from Bing News Search API query string?

408 Views Asked by At

Why would this call to to the Bing API's News Search endpoint...

https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v7.0/news/search?q="Highwire+Press"+OR+"Chrome+River"+OR+"PCA+Predict"+OR+"Backbase"+OR+"Arrivalist"+OR+"iotec"+OR+"Signafire"+OR+"Mirriad"&sortBy=Date&textDecorations=true&textFormat=HTML

... turn up this story https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/prnewswire/press_releases/Pennsylvania/2018/05/24/MN04495

... which contains "HighWire" but not the phrase "HighWire Press" as given in the query?

I'm finding other examples of looseness in multi-word sub-queries in the query string...

Why does it also seem to produce https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/feeding-the-future-test-tube-trees-robots-picking-fruit-and-burgers-made-without-cows-36942007.html as a result? That doesn't seem to contain anything matching.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

7
On

For strict/verbatim matching, you can use "+" operator. For example, if you are only interested in Highwire Press, your query should read +Highwire Press. No need to have quotes.

Also, "OR" operator behavior is dubious if you want to use with strict/verbatim matches across all search engines. It makes it difficult for relevance rankers to weigh words it seems. May be you can make 2 queries one each for ORed terms.