Bing search API results decreases with increase in web.offset(skip)value

Question

I am testing a query with Bing service explorer which returns the number of records to about 600k but while navigating to next page the results keeps on decreasing and will eventually come to zero.

I am using both Bing Search API and Bing Search Web Results only API currently I am using free 5000 requests/month.

The example query which I am testing in Bing's service explorer is

https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Bing/SearchWeb/v1/Web?Query=%27xbox%27&Market=%27en-US%27&$skip=1300

I need to capture as many records as possible(>=10k) but with this it is limiting me to about 700 or 800 records .

what I am I missing?

Answer 1

I posted the question in bing search forum this is what they said hope it helps someone!

Search results are limited to the first 1,000 results. This means that the total of &top plus $skip can not be greater than 1,000. The maximum value for &top is 100 for web, image, and video and 15 for news and the maximum value for $skip is 1000

Answer 2

$skip mean that you are requesting result/ image after specified available bing data. For example if you specify 50 as $skip value, then it means it will ignore the first 50 data and start requesting result from data on 51 order.

Bing limiting to maximum 50 result per request. If you want to set the number of images you want to request, you can use $top. Its implementation is the same with $skip. Just put the number you want after $top. Example: $top=33.

What if you want to fetch images more than 50 per single click? You could multiply the request with php for loop to increase the $skip value and keep the $top value to the maximum allowed number to prevent skipping data per request.