Bing vs Google: Search Engine Comparison 2022
Google versus Bing: the ongoing debate between the two top search engine rivals. Whilst Google continues to dominate the Western market, with an 87.7% market share in the UK alone, in recent years, Microsoft’s Bing has begun to reclaim some of that popularity.
Although often seen as the underdog, Bing actually offers businesses incredible SEO and advertising opportunities that could improve the visibility of your website like never before.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the key differences between Google and Bing, both in terms of SEO ranking factors and beyond. Want to sink your teeth into the great search engine debate? Keep reading…
A short history of Google and Bing
Google was founded by two Stanford graduates (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) in 1998. Fun fact: It originally started as a research project known as BackRub. It was given this name due to its unique approach to website ranking - checking site backlinks to determine a website's authority and reliability. This was what gave Google a competitive edge, and continues to do so even today.
Bing’s history, however, is much more recent. Originally MSN Search, Bing was launched and rebranded in July 2009. It saw its first major update in 2011 when Microsoft introduced a new index-serving technology known as ‘Tiger’. From there, it was completely redesigned in 2015 and began to penalise keyword stuffing and enhance its local search features. In 2020, it was given the name ‘Microsoft Bing’, along with a fresh new look.
When compared to Google, Bing’s result page updates are rarely discussed in the SEO community - Google seems to take the lead in these conversations. The competition between the two brands begs the question: What makes them so different from one another?
Bing vs. Google: Ranking Factors
Ranking factors are the conditions your website must meet to rank highly on search engine results pages. Interestingly, Bing and Google share many of the same ranking factors - their differences lie in the value they place upon each one. Thankfully, this means you don’t have to entirely redesign your website to optimise it for Bing - there are small tweaks that you can make to ensure your site ranks highly on the results pages of both search engines.
SEO: Similarities
Both Google and Bing value website speed and mobile-friendliness - so be sure to keep these at the forefront of your SEO plan.
Both engines also value high-quality backlinks (these are the number of links to your website that feature on other websites), so these are important to consider too. Bing and Google also take location into consideration when ranking content, so be sure to incorporate geo-specific keywords within your pages, so your website will pop up when people search for a particular product or service in your area.
SEO: Key Differences
Google and Bing differ largely in how they interpret website content. Bing, for example, relies upon basic indicators of content: keywords, page titles and metadata. Google, however, is less focused on these factors due to its superior interpretation of different languages within context. Google promotes content that is written with people in mind - and not over-optimised. This means that it’s slightly easier to optimise your website for Bing than it is for Google. Below are more differences in how each search engine ranks websites on their results pages:
Metadata: Bing relies heavily upon Metadata to rank content. Metadata is the short description of your website’s content - usually found below a page title on the result’s page. Google has less of a focus on metadata - treating it as an advert for your website, rather than an indicator of your website’s content.
Anchor text: Bing also pays more attention to the use of anchor text (these are the clickable links within your content) and will reward websites that use anchor text relevant to their page titles.
User experience: Google has recently launched a new set of ranking factors known as Core Web Vitals - this is a new, heavier focus on the user experience. Google will promote websites that have an enjoyable user experience - this means prioritising websites that are stable, speedy and lacking in intrusive pop-ups.
Domain types: Bing promotes pages that have been active for a long time, or that attract a lot of traffic. It also favours top-level domains like .gov or .edu. Google, however, considers commercial or popular websites to be just as valuable and ranks them as such.
Backlinks: Google, in line with its original name and design, values high-quality backlinks. Bing doesn’t place as much importance on backlinks, but they still affect results page ranking.
Social media: Google does not consider social signals (e.g. the success of a company’s post on Instagram) when ranking its results pages. Bing, however, rewards a strong social media presence and promotes pages with higher numbers of likes, shares and retweets.
Multimedia content: Google can easily interpret multimedia and Javascript content on websites. Bing, however, warns that having media-rich pages can affect its understanding of your website’s content - and in turn, its result’s page ranking.
Mobile vs. Desktop Indexing: Google ranks websites based on the mobile version of the site. In contrast, Bing uses a single index that considers both the desktop and mobile user experience, so that users can enjoy website content, from whatever device they choose.
Bing vs. Google: The Results Pages
Not only do Google and Bing differ in terms of their approach to their ranking processes, but they also have different features on their results pages. For the most part, they’re fairly similar, both offering maps, jobs, flights and shopping features (to name a few)… However, there are a few key differences:
Scholarly articles: Bing has no alternative to the much-loved academic feature, Google Scholar.
Visuals: Bing offers a slightly more immersive results page, featuring images and infographics related to what’s typed into the search bar. Google, however, presents its results as plain text.
Local search: When users are searching for a service near them, both Google and Bing offer a ‘near me’ option that shows the closest, most relevant businesses in their local area. However, Google focuses on the user’s immediate vicinity, and Bing shows a slightly larger view of their wider area.
Maps: At first glance, Bing and Google Maps appear strikingly similar. Interestingly, their differences lie in the directions they provide. Google offers slightly longer estimates of travel time - but is more likely to alert you if any closures or accidents occur along your journey.
Visual search: Bing takes the win for visual search abilities - giving users the ability to search for clothing, identify famous faces, explore landmarks and find similar images in just a few clicks. Bing is also particularly good at listing relevant information besides these images, including price. Bing also focuses more on image quality than Google.
Voice recognition: The two competitors offer different advantages in terms of voice recognition technology. Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortona, is known for its strong speech recognition abilities, but Google’s assistant has the upper hand when it comes to understanding context.
Bing vs. Google: Paid Advertising
Both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising offer huge benefits to their users - despite the fact that Microsoft Advertising was launched in 2006 (as MSN AdCenter), six years after the launch of Google Ads. Below, we’ll break down the differences between the two:
Reach: With its dominance over the Western market, it’s not surprising to learn that Google offers users a far wider reach than Bing. However, Bing has been making strides to set itself apart from its competitors, developing its own unique format of ads…
Multimedia ads: Once again putting visuals at the forefront of its results page, Bing offers multimedia ads, which include a headline, image and product description. Only one ad features on the results page at a time, attracting the attention of those scrolling through the results.
Pay-per-click advertising: Google remains the top dog in terms of PPC advertising - however, this means that there is greater competition between businesses for top-paid positions on Google’s results page. This can deter smaller businesses, who don’t have the same advertising budget as larger companies. The cost-per-click for individual keywords is lower with Microsoft, however, this comes at a price - although more expensive, you’re guaranteed a much larger audience over at Google.
Target audience: Although less in volume than Google, Bing’s audience tends to be older and of higher education. Both platforms allow you to target your audience based on different demographics. Bing has also recently announced an update where businesses can use data from an individual’s LinkedIn profile to advertise directly to those likely to buy from them.
Which search engine should you use?
Both Google and Bing have their advantages and flaws - it’s best to incorporate both Bing and Google into your Digital Marketing Strategy to maximise results. Serving ads to both groups of search-engine crawlers will likely attract new audiences to your site, giving you access to the unique features of both platforms and a wider reach in total.
If you need help adjusting your SEO strategy to fit the requirements of both Bing and Google, don’t hesitate to get in touch by filling in this short form, or dropping us an email at hello@theunderdogagency.co.uk. We’ll be there to walk you through the next steps of your digital marketing journey.
