Jun 01 2009

Use Bing As Safari Search Provider

Published by gringod at 3:56 pm under General

I’m always looking for the next great thing when it comes to Search.  Google is great but I can’t help but feel it could be better.  Since attending a developer course for FAST ESP back in January I’ve been looking for a Search provider that does more for navigating results rather than just allowing you to page through X thousand results until you get bored and try other search terms.

Microsoft may have hit the nail on the head with Bing.com.  Whilst I think the interface could do with a bit more thought, the features are spot on.

Unfortunately Safari browser on MacOS is tied to Google.com as the search provider.  Change the search provider requires changing the source code of the application… or Glims – a nifty Safari plugin.

Once Glims is downloaded and installed, open the Safari Preferences and under the Glims tab select “Search Engines”.

GLims Search Providers

You then need to add a new search engine with the following settings:

Bing.com settings

For the copy-paste folks out there, the url should be: http://www.bing.com/search?q=#query#

You can drag-drop the Bing search engine to the top of the Glims search engines list.  Also, select Bing from the search engines drop-down in the search box of a Safari browser window.

I’m not sure if this is required for it to work, but you may need to set your Bing.com region to being the U.S.A.: http://bit.ly/42kg8

14 responses so far

14 Responses to “Use Bing As Safari Search Provider”

  1. snopon 01 Jun 2009 at 10:59 pm

    why bing is so great?
    it doesn’t have anything new
    try sortfix.com

  2. gringodon 02 Jun 2009 at 3:36 pm

    @snop, I’ve taken a look at that site. It does have a very interesting idea behind it but it is still just layering functionality over what is very simple result set – plus I found it very difficult to engineer the results I wanted from a simple query.

    8/10 concept
    5/10 implementation

  3. jakeon 04 Jun 2009 at 5:13 pm

    I love Bing. I feel bad because I do love yahoo as a company and I like their homepage but Bing just got it right and it’s easy to use. I hate to say it because I’m a big MAC user but I think Microsoft is making a comeback for me. Windows 7 will allow touch (which Apple should have done after the first ipod touch was released)
    and their Zune has picked up it’s features and looks pretty slick, and now Bing. MAC still rules for their o/s and easy integration though and I think that will always be the case. But for now I’m going to BING IT!

  4. Joeon 11 Jun 2009 at 12:01 am

    jake the same happens to me! (well not exactly the same)
    You forgot to menction the new xbox functionality. I think its called project natal or something like that, but its simply awesome!

  5. EkALBon 10 Jul 2009 at 6:51 am

    How do i get Bing as the provider if I’m using Safari on Windows?
    I run a mac and windows 7 but love Safari on Windows 7

  6. [...] a Mac user because you can not update your Safari search bar to default to Bing. Luckily, I found a helpful little utility and how-to that remedies the [...]

  7. Micon 23 Nov 2009 at 12:03 pm

    I am sorry guys but no matter how companies goes really hard to jack Microsoft still Microsoft is the leader as it always been.

    regarding Bing it’s way more pro, easy, fun, and up to standard. since it’s launched till this day, I’ve never opened any provider at all not even by mistake.

    the world is changing Microsoft always leading.

  8. Binged againon 11 Dec 2009 at 11:50 am

    I switched from Google to Bing and haven’t looked back. Results are not as revelant as Google, but the way they are presented more than makes up for this. They are good enough results for my work. I don’t need billions of detailed hits, just some good ones, plus the UI is better than Google’s blank white page — boy did I get tired of that homepage.

    Now I wish Facebook would do the same.

  9. pieR0Uron 16 Jan 2010 at 3:12 am

    How can I set bing as the default search engine for safari? (Windows Version). In here it’s for mac users. :( What about windows users :(

  10. Kymmon 05 Feb 2010 at 4:50 am

    i think that Bing is not as good as Google. Google would still index new websites faster than Bing. Microsoft would still need a lot of catching to do with GoogleBot.

  11. Kim Lautneron 18 Feb 2010 at 5:57 pm

    I use both Bing and Google search engine and i dont see much difference in their search results. I use google for searching hard to find academic topics and Bing for general search.

  12. Benon 20 Feb 2010 at 1:43 am

    I don’t like google.

    Welcome Bing!

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