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Power Automate to Bing Search Not Working

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Posted on by Deborah1

I am trying to take search results from Bing and put them into an Excel spreadsheet using Power Automate Desktop. When I try to extract the data, it is only extracting the first page of the search results. It goes to the second page but it does not extract anything. It then moves on to the next steps in the flow. I tried changing several of the settings but it is not recognizing the UI selectors correctly.

My flow is:

1: Display input dialogue - for website url

2: Display input dialogue - for search term

3: Launch new Microsoft Edge - maximized and navigate to Bing.com

4: Populate field on Wepage - populates the search field with site:website url search term

5: Send keys - sents the return key to the browser

6: Extract data from webpage - extracts the search results and sends them to an excel file (this is where I have the issue)

7: Split Text - splits the website url by the . deliminator

8: Close Excel - saves the Excel file on close and names it by the website and keyword

9: Close web browser

I tried the same method with Google search. It works but I keep getting reCaptcha's and I have no idea how to use PowerAutomate to solve them.

Please see the orginal question here: Power Automate to Bing Search Not Working - Microsoft Community

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Power Automate Desktop

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jacquimuller 115 on at

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reCaptcha's are notorious for trying to prevent bots from polling sites. For this reason, APIs are often exposed to get around the complexities posed by reCaptcha to keep bots away. Take a look at the Bing API https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/apis/bing-web-search-api which will hopefully help you get around the issue. There's also an API available for DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/api

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Pavel_NaNoi 1,074 on at

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I remember solving the reCaptcha issue by launching chrome in incognito, try that, if that doesn't work, I think adding an ad-blocker extension on top of that (e.g. uBlock Origin) which stops most trackers from following you will do the trick.

However if you still want to use Bing, let me know and I'll take a look.

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NikosMoutzou Microsoft Employee on at

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Hello @Deborah1 .

The UI element that is being used for pager in the extraction of the results in Bing cannot be addressed with a static selector as the selector is changing in each page of results in Bing. You have to edit the selector of the pager as specified in the Extract data from web action and create a dynamic selector that could identify the pager UI element in each page.

Click on 'Advanced settings'

Edit the selector of the pager parameter:

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Deborah1 2 on at

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Hello @NikosMoutzou

Thank you for your reply. It took way longer than expected. The answer you gave me does not work. I am already using dynamic selectors for the pager.

I am also trying to extract the page title and link from the search results for each page. It is only extracting the first page. What do I need to do to get these working for the rest of the pages?
Does Bing have a reCaptcha's? If so, how do I get around this using Power Automate? Do I need to use the Bing API?

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