Bing and the Microsoft SMB Community Blog - Find it fast!

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By now you’ve probably seen the information on Bing in many places, including several of my recent posts like:

Well, this past week I have received a few questions from Partners on various topics that they had questions on and they were looking for help with the answers. A couple of them even included something like, “I’m sure you’ve posted on it before, I’m just not sure when,” in their inquiries to me. After sending over the links to the information back to the Partners, I received a few comments back like, “Wow, that was quick! “ or “I wish I could find that as fast!” To these Partners I sent a reply that contained the secret, which also led me to put up this post: Remember, Bing, the “sound of found.”

Bing provides you the ability to limit your search scope to specific sites to find information if you want. For instance, if you know you’ve seen me Blog about a specific topic or if you are wondering if I have, you can use Bing to search specifically the Blog for your results by simply limiting the scope to the Blog. Here’s how:

In the Bing search box, enter the search terms you are looking for, then add the word “site:” and the site you want to limit it to, without the https:// notation. For instance, to search for information on SBS 2008 CALs on my Blog, you would enter “sbs 2008 cals site:blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz” and click the search icon. Here’s what that looks like:

Once you press the search icon, your results will be listed right there for you. Here are a couple of other examples based on some actual questions I received this week from Partners. I will show you what I was asked and what the search string you would want to enter in would be. To save you from having to copy and paste this into Bing, I put a “Bing It” button to the left of the question for you that is hyperlinked to the search term, so you can simply click that to see the results:

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  • Question 1: “What’s the possibilities for someone who buys a 32-bit OS? Can they get a replacement media for 64-bit if the desire it at a later time? Do they have to buy an “upgrade”?
  • Bing search term: 32 64 bit media site:blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz
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  • Question 2: “Can I install Windows 2003 R2 on the second server if I buy SBS 2008 Premium?”
  • Bing earch term: windows 2003 on sbs 2008 second server site:blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz

So go ahead, give it your own try. Pick your search term and limit your search to whatever site you want. For instance, see if you can find out what happens when you add Software Assurance to an OEM Office license on my Blog using Bing or maybe try something a little more fun and see if you can find out how you can win a free laptop on my Blog using Bing. :-)

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman – Follow me on clip_image002clip_image004
Global Partner Experience Lead
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
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