mcp-bing-search

A local MCP server for web search that works from mainland China without any API key.

• Primary engine: Bing (cn.bing.com)
• Automatic fallback for fresh Chinese trending topics: Qihoo 360 → Sogou
• Resolves search-engine redirect links to real URLs

It was built to replace public searxng instances (e.g. baresearch.org), which are unreachable from mainland China and return nothing for Chinese long-tail queries.

Not affiliated with Microsoft's official mcp-server-bing-search (which requires an API key) — this is a no-key, China-friendly alternative.

Why this exists

Problem	This project's answer
Public searxng instances unreachable from mainland China	Direct request to cn.bing.com, which is reachable without a proxy
No API key / no billing	Scrapes the search result page (HTML parsing), no key needed
Bing indexes Chinese campus/trending topics poorly	fallback automatically retries with 360 / Sogou
Baidu blocks automated requests with captchas	Baidu is intentionally not used

Features

• web_search(query, max_results, fallback) — Bing first; when results are irrelevant (common for very fresh Chinese topics), automatically retries 360 → Sogou.
• cn_search(query, max_results) — search Chinese engines directly (360 → Sogou).
• Redirect-link resolution — 360/Sogou's encrypted jump links (so.com/link?m=...) are resolved to the final real URL (HTTP redirects and JS redirects supported).
• Self-contained single file; only depends on mcp, httpx, lxml.

Install

Option A: pip (recommended)

pip install mcp-bing-search

Option B: from source

git clone https://github.com/Quqing-future/mcp-bing-search.git
cd mcp-bing-search
pip install .
# or run directly without installing:
python mcp_bing_search.py

Configure with Reasonix

Add to your global config.toml (all projects) or project reasonix.toml:

[[plugins]]
name    = "bing-search"
command = "python"                      # or the absolute path to python.exe
args    = ["-m", "mcp_bing_search"]     # if installed via pip
# args = ["/path/to/mcp_bing_search.py"] # if running from source

Or use the standard .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bing-search": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "mcp_bing_search"]
    }
  }
}

Changes take effect on the next session. Tools appear as mcp__bing-search__web_search and mcp__bing-search__cn_search.

Configure with other MCP clients

Any MCP client works — Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, etc. Point it at:

python -m mcp_bing_search
# or
python /path/to/mcp_bing_search.py

Tools

web_search(query: str, max_results: int = 8, fallback: bool = True) -> str

Search the web. Bing first; if fallback is enabled and Bing returns no relevant results (no title/url contains a query token), retries with Qihoo 360, then Sogou.

cn_search(query: str, max_results: int = 8) -> str

Search Chinese engines directly (360 → Sogou). Use for fresh Chinese trending topics, campus/weibo news, or anything Bing indexes poorly.

How it works

MCP client (Reasonix / Claude Desktop / ...)
   ↕  stdio + JSON-RPC
mcp_bing_search.py  (MCP server)
   ↕  HTTPS (plain HTTP GET, browser User-Agent)
cn.bing.com  →  www.so.com  →  www.sogou.com

1. Request — httpx GETs https://cn.bing.com/search?q=... with a desktop browser User-Agent.
2. Parse — lxml XPath extracts title / url / snippet from li.b_algo nodes.
3. Relevance check — if no result title/url contains any query token (e.g. "本地大模型", "部署教程"), the result set is considered irrelevant.
4. Fallback — on empty/irrelevant Bing results, tries 360 → Sogou and uses the first engine with relevant results.
5. Link cleanup — redirect links (so.com/link?m=..., /link?url=...) are resolved once more to their real destination (Location header or window.location.replace(...)).

Known limitations

• Scraping depends on the engines' HTML structure; a redesign may break parsing.
• No key = no SLA; very frequent calls may be rate-limited.
• Bing's coverage of fresh Chinese social-media topics is weak — use fallback or cn_search for those.
• Baidu is excluded on purpose: it aggressively captchas automated requests.
• ToS disclaimer: this project works by parsing public search-result pages. It is provided for personal / educational use and does not claim to comply with the terms of service of Bing, Qihoo 360, or Sogou. Scraping may violate those terms; automated access may be throttled or blocked. Use at your own risk, and consider the official Search APIs for production use.

License

MIT © Quqing-future