Lesson 12: Exclusive Bing Search Operators
So far, we've covered many search operators and their power in refining results. In this lesson, we'll explore exclusive Bing operators that Google lacks. Additionally, some content is indexed by Bing (or Yandex) but not by Google, making multi-engine searches essential.
Example use case: If you find an article via Google that has since been deleted (and Google has no cached version), searching the title/URL on Bing or Yandex may reveal a cached copy.
linkfromdomain: — Find Outgoing Links from a Domain
This operator lists all external links mentioned on pages within the specified domain (as indexed by Bing).
Syntax:
linkfromdomain:example.com
Example:
linkfromdomain:zsecurity.org
Results show URLs linked from zsecurity.org pages. This is useful for mapping a site's external references (tools, resources, scripts, etc.).
Practical follow-up:
Pick a result (e.g., a GitHub script link), then verify its presence by searching Google with:
site:zsecurity.org "script-name-or-url"
This confirms the link was indeed mentioned in an article on the target site.
ip: — Find Websites Hosted on a Specific IP Address
This operator returns all indexed sites/subdomains hosted on the given IP.
Syntax: (note the space after colon is important)
ip: 123.456.789.012
Example:
Searching an IP returned ~31,000 results, dominated by hu-berlin.de and its subdomains.
To find other sites on the same IP (excluding the main domain):
ip: 123.456.789.012 -site:hu-berlin.de
This revealed additional sites like european-law-school, humboldt-portal.de, etc., all sharing the IP.
(An even easier method for IP-to-domain mapping will be covered in the WHOIS section.)
contains: — Find Pages Linking to Specific File Types
This operator finds pages on a domain that contain links to a specified file type (e.g., PDFs hosted anywhere).
Syntax:
site:example.com contains:pdf
Example:
site:zsecurity.org contains:pdf
Unlike filetype:pdf (which returns direct PDF files), this returns regular webpages that link to PDFs.
Opening a result leads to an article; scrolling reveals linked PDFs (often hosted externally or behind registration).
These Bing-exclusive operators provide powerful ways to discover connections, shared hosting, and linked resources that Google cannot surface directly.