Webometric research with the Bing Search API 2.0

In May 2011 the Bing Search API 2.0 had become the only major international web search engine data source available for automatic offline processing for webometric research. This article describes its key features, contrasting them with previous web search data sources, and discussing implications for webometric research. Overall, it seems that large-scale quantitative web research is possible with the Bing Search API 2.0, including query splitting, but that legal issues require the redesign of webometric software to ensure that all results obtained from Bing are displayed directly to the user.

► Large-scale quantitative web research is possible with the Bing Search API 2.0, including query splitting.
► Legal issues require the redesign of webometric software to ensure that all results obtained from Bing are displayed directly to the user.
► There are scale dependant systematic anomalies in the hit count estimates reported by Bing.