With Bing, Microsoft launched a competitor to Google on the market a few years ago. This search engine is often neglected in optimization, but could make a difference overall.
What is Bing?
Microsoft Bing is a search engine that has been on the market since 2012 and is linked to various Microsoft services. Overall, Bing has a lower reach than Google, but it is still relevant for online marketing and search engine optimization.
What functions does Bing have?
Bing’s functions are based on those of its competitors. This is also about searching for information using search terms – including organic search results, videos, images, news and maps.
Own voice assistant with Cortana
Voice assistants have been in demand since 2011 – which is why Microsoft was quick to launch its own voice assistant with Cortana. Specific queries can be made and Cortana can then search the Bing database and display the relevant data.
How relevant is Bing in Germany?
In Germany, Google still has the lion’s share of the market, with a market share of 83% in desktop searches and 96% in mobile searches. Bing accounts for a fluctuating share of a few percentage points, and Google’s market share has primarily resulted from the Android operating system – because Google is the default search engine here and very few people change this. In addition, Microsoft’s own browser Microsoft Edge is hardly in demand. On new notebooks, users download Google Chrome, where Google is also the default search engine, while sites such as T-Online, Web.de and GMX are also very popular in Germany and are set as the browser’s start page. These also use Google search, which means that Google’s market share is growing accordingly.
How important is Bing in the USA?
In the USA, Bing is more successful – Google’s market share here is 80.24 percent, while Bing’s is 12.122 percent. One reason for this is Yahoo, as the site uses Microsoft’s search engine.
How useful is SEO for Bing?
In terms of functionality, Bing is similar to its big competitor, there is hardly any difference. The search results are also almost at the same level, as the snippets are also displayed here, but there is no direct competition between the two companies, and those who also perform SEO for Bing are not penalized or anything similar. Since both search engines value quality, optimization for Bing is basically a “side effect”, with the only advantage being that there may be other keywords that are in a niche at Bing and have already become too big at Google.
Traffic from Bing is more qualitative
There is a recurring opinion among advertisers that traffic from Bing is far more qualitative. This conclusion was first reached by Matthew Woodward in 2014, as he found in a test that traffic from Bing has a much lower bounce rate. These people also subscribe to newsletters more frequently and are more likely to click on affiliate links or advertising banners. Building backlinks is therefore worthwhile for every search engine at the same time.
What are the ranking factors for Bing?
The ranking factors are similar to those of Google, including the following:
- Quality and trust: If the author of the article is known, trust and credibility increase. In addition, texts with cross-references are weighted more heavily than walls of text without reference to internal and external sources.
- Regionality: As a rule, people only click on results from their own country, as they are more likely to be convinced that they will find a suitable solution here.
- Relevance: Articles with the keywords searched for are favored, as this is more likely to match the search intention, and is therefore rated positively.
- Loading speed: Fast loading times lead to a low bounce rate and satisfied visitors, which is why Bing also attaches great importance to this.
- Topicality: A search engine does not like to display outdated content, which can lead to losses.
