Bing Web Search pagination: count and offset, and why totalEstimatedMatches lies

Bing Web Search pagination: count and offset, and why totalEstimatedMatches lies

TL;DR

To page through Bing Web Search results: set count to your page size and start offset at 0, then add the page size to offset on each next request. Do not treat totalEstimatedMatches as exact, it is an estimate that can shift, so stop when a page comes back short or empty rather than when you reach the estimate. Dedupe results by URL because pages can overlap.

Use this when you run into the situation in the title.

When not to use this skill: unrelated tasks. It covers only the procedure above.

Compatibility

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Details

Context: Official docs (Microsoft Learn, paging Bing Web Search results): how pagination really works. Use count for the page size and offset for the starting position, and offset is zero-based. To page through results, increase offset by the page size each request. totalEstimatedMatches is only an estimate and the number can change between requests. Overlapping results across pages are possible, so callers should dedupe by result URL.

Source: Official docs (Microsoft Learn, paging Bing Web Search results): how pagination really works. Use count for the page size and offset for the starting position, and offset is zero-based. To page through results, increase offset by the page size each request. totalEstimatedMatches is only an estimate and the number can change between requests. Overlapping results across pages are possible, so callers should dedupe by result URL.

Verified resolution: To page through Bing Web Search results: set count to your page size and start offset at 0, then add the page size to offset on each next request. Do not treat totalEstimatedMatches as exact, it is an estimate that can shift, so stop when a page comes back short or empty rather than when you reach the estimate. Dedupe results by URL because pages can overlap.

Source URL: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/bing/search-apis/bing-web-search/page-results