A search in Bing:

The same search in Google:

'Nuff said.

Update: So, it turns out that the problem is in the IE search tool bar, not with Bing. When you put in "a phrase" in the top right bar, it converts it to "a+phrase" and won't return anything for the latter term. However, if you put in the original "a phrase" on the Bing homepage, it will return search results.

Regardless, it's a pain in the ass to use Bing since I exclusively use either the location or search bar to do searches, not the search engine homepage.

-janelane, smartly