Bing vs Google: A Brief Anecdote of Two Leading Search Engines

We all know that Google has continued to reign supreme over the last two decades. However, with the commencement of other significant search engines like Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Bing, Yandex, and Baidu, users have started shifting to other browsers as well. 

So we have planned to make a comprehensive study of two prominent search engines, ie. Google & Bing, or perhaps it’s going to be Bing vs Google.

Go through the entire blog and figure out which search engine is better for you. Although we can vouch for both Bing & Google, you need to find out the perfect one for you. 

A Brief History of Bing and Google

Before we start with a comparison between Bing and Google, let’s take note of their historical development. 

Google

Two Ph.D. students from Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, started working on Google in 1998. Initially named “Backrub,” their main purpose was to store a vast amount of accessible data on the internet for users. 

Since 1998, Google has had no low graph in its performance. It kept on growing exponentially with its other business tools, like

1. Google Docs
2. Gmail 
3. Google Drive
4. Google Maps
5. Google Translate
6. YouTube 
7. Google Chrome 

Recently, Google ended up launching a generative AI chatbot called Gemini; a new revolutionary initiative in the era of Artificial Intelligence. 

Bing

Bing was introduced by Microsoft in 2009. 

The search engine rapidly gained popularity in the market because of its features like search suggestions that offered more relevant, precise, and intuitive results to users. 

Bing continued to give a decent speed and experience to its customers until 2023, when Microsoft integrated AI-enabled features with Bing search engine for fast and easy results. 

User Distribution: Bing vs Google

After knowing the historical development of Bing and Google, you must have clear data on user distribution of the two leading search engines. 

Bing vs Google Statistics in 2024

1. Google leads the search engine market with 93.37% of total search engine users, while Bing holds just 2.81% of it. 
2. Most old-age users prefer to use Bing, while younger ones stick to Google. 
3. Google initiates over 9 billion searches per day, and around 900 million users perform searches with Bing.
4. The total number of visits on Google is 88.6 billion, while Bing has 1.4 billion.
5. Google has a billion plus daily users; meanwhile, Bing has only 100 million daily active users.
6. The bounce rate of Bing is higher than that of Google. 
7. In China, Bing has a massive 15.83% market share. 
8. The average visit duration of Google is 10 minutes and 54 seconds, while Bing has an average visit duration of 7 minutes and 17 seconds.

Bing vs Google: Search Results, Ranking Factors & Algorithms

Bing and Google have different functions through which they offer different search results to users. 

So, here’s a detailed analysis and comparison between their algorithms, ranking factors, and search results of Bing & Google. 

Let’s proceed.

Search Result Page of Bing & Google

Bing and Google search result pages are closely similar to each other. 

Both Bing and Google offer a large number of features like image carousels, answer boxes, and snippets. 

The “Q&A” of Bing is similar to Google’s featured snippets. 

Moreover, Microsoft Bing offers results driven by dense images and infographics. This is due to the “whole page algorithm” engrafted in Bing. 

Let’s understand this with the help of an example. 

What happens when we search “Filter coffee” on Bing and Google?

The search results given by Google are recipes, tutorials, ecommerce purchase stores, suggestions, etc.

However, the search results given by Bing have more pictures, layouts, and explanations. 

This proves that Google and Microsoft Bing follow different algorithms to offer results to users’ search queries. 

Search Algorithm of Bing & Google

Bing and Google use distinct search algorithms to evaluate, rank, and display the web pages as per your queries. 

Google considers multiple ranking factors like quality, relevancy, authority, uniqueness, popularity, language, location, user behavior, and user preferences. 

Bing uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to display the search results. 

Ranking Factors

The key differences between Bing and Google ranking factors are: 

Keywords 

1. Google uses semantic search to comprehend the intent of user’s search queries. 
2. Bing uses artificial intelligence to deliver the results of users’ search queries. 

Backlinks

1. Google considers the authority and diversity of domain links. 
2. Bing counts on the anchor texts and quantity of backlinks. 

So, as we know, backlink status has great importance in uplifting a website’s rank; you can use the backlink checker free online tool of RankWatch to create an effective backlinking strategy for your brand.

The insights given by this tool like total backlinks, percentage of active links, percentage of deleted links, total number of referring domains, etc., help evaluate the backlinking authority of websites that you should initiate a backlinking partnership with. 

On-Page Optimization 

1. Google analyzes the holistic on-page SEO accomplishment of your website. 
2. Bing focuses on on-page SEO verticals like headings, title tags, meta descriptions, etc. 

To elevate the on-page optimization of your website, you can use the free on-page SEO checker of RankWatch.

SEO IQ fetches important metrics like presence of exact and broad keywords throughout the content, length of meta tags and URLs, page speed, etc. after comparing the data with top competitors. 

Using these insights, you can improve the overall structure of your website content and create better headings, meta tags, and URLs.

Further, the content recommendations section gives you suggestions on the correct usage of long-tail keywords along with their usage throughout the content.

Finally, the Content Editor offers you the optimization status of the chosen web page along with real-time opportunities to edit and improve it. 

Here, you can reframe the content as per the recommendations and simultaneously check your optimization score. The higher the optimization score of the given web page, the better will be its ranking on Google.

You also get question based relatable search terms to improve the quality of your content and make them relatable to your audiences. 

Mobile SEO 

1. Google first indexes the mobile version of your website. 
2. Bing considers a single indexing approach for both mobile and desktop versions. 

To check how compatible your website is with mobile devices, you can use the free mobile-friendliness checker of RankWatch.

It analyzes your domain and lets you know whether your website is mobile-friendly. 

Social Signals

1. Social signals don’t affect ranking in the case of Google. 
2. Bing strongly considers the social media availability of your brand. 

Search Quality of Bing & Google

Although Bing and Google both focus on relevancy, uniqueness, and quality of the content, there is a defined method of taking them into consideration. 

Google relies on:

E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T refers to the “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness” of your website. Any brand with a high Google E-E-A-T factor would be trusted more by Google. As a result its webpage would appear more as a search result for users. 

BERT

BERT refers to the “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers,” which is a natural language processing format used by Google for a better understanding of any content.  

Core Updates

These are the timely updates made by Google for quality and performance improvement. They also block unethical SEO practices to make sure that websites are aligned with the updated guidelines of Google. 

Know the Google updates timeline and publish your content which can possibly appear as the search result of users. 

Bing focuses on:

Readability

Comprehensive language, simple structure, and plain content formatting determine Bing’s readability factor. 

Uniqueness

How fresh and up-to-date the content is in regards to the information defines the uniqueness of the content. 

Multimedia

This is the measurement of how well the content has been developed with videos, images, and other media elements. 

Index Size

Google’s indexing frequency is comparatively more frequent than that of Bing. Google has billions of webpages in its indexing slot, while Bing has an average of 8-14 million index size. 

Visual Search of Bing and Google

The use of images instead of text to perform search is called visual search. Both Bing and Google offer good visual search functionality.

When it comes to the comparison, you can click the camera icon on Bing and upload an image from your local storage. 

You can also take a photo or paste the image URL to perform visual search. Additionally, there is a slot of sample image that can be used to leverage your search task.

Google offers the same visual search function as Bing. However, there is no sample image slot that Microsoft offers you as an added opportunity. 

Voice Assistant & Voice Searches

Both Bing and Google have established the same functioning voice search and voice assistant across their platforms. 

You just have to click on the microphone and start speaking the search queries. Both voice assistants offer users a convenient and reliable search experience. 

Bing, Google, & Their AI Implementation

Bing and Google use artificial intelligence to broaden users’ search experience. 

The major AI facilitation used by Bing and Google are: 

AI Algorithms 

Since 2015, Google has been using an AI-based search algorithm called RankBrain. Bing also uses effective AI technology to offer search results to users. 

AI Chatbots

As we know, Bing has recently adopted OpenAI’s GPT-4 in its platform. So, now Microsoft Bing can create its own AI-driven texts to develop content for users. 

Google is yet to adopt chatbot technology for its search engine platform. However, it has already introduced generative AI to its AI search program known as Search Labs.

AI Content Generation

Bing uses Chat-GPT to develop all sorts of content, while Google has not integrated any such facilitation. 

Google vs. Bing Comparison of Ad Opportunities 

Both Bing and Google offer opportunities to drive the target audiences with paid ad solutions. 

Google AdWords is Google’s advertising platform, and Microsoft’s advertising platform is known as Bing Ads. 

Since Google AdWords & Bing Ads work in similar ways, you can run your PPC campaigns on both platforms to target the defined search engine users. 

Although the traffic on Bing is comparatively lower than Google, many digital marketers claim that the CPC is also much lower on Microsoft Bing. That’s an added advantage for your business. 

CPC value is an essential factor in drafting an effective pay-per-click campaign for your brand.

You can use the free keyword research tool of RankWatch to get insights like keyword difficulty, CPC value, competition, and paid keyword suggestions to foster an efficient PPC advertising campaign for your business. 

Privacy: Bing Vs Google

Bing and Google almost adhere to the same privacy policies. 

Bing uses consumer data to offer recommendations, personalized products, and service suggestions to the users. It keeps the database of your search terms, IP address, and location. 

As a service glitch, Bing does not enable users to disable personalized search results or turn off data collection. 

Google also collects the search data, but it automatically deletes the history after 18 months. Even the users can delete their search history at any point in time. 

Bing vs Google: A Comparison of their Map Accuracy

We all know that Google Maps is more popular than any other search engine offering the same services worldwide. This is because of its better satellite quality, aerial images, traffic information, location information, and a lot more. 

Also, Bing does not offer apps, which is a major drawback today. 

So, let’s compare the feature differences between Google Maps and Bing Maps.

Features Of Google Maps

1. Complete 360° panoramic views of buildings and streets. 
2. Detailed reviews of hotels and restaurants.
3. Street views to explore a place better. 
4. End-to-end information on businesses, landmarks, parks, and other attractions.
5. Save and share the places with other users.  
6. Location-sharing and editing options are available. 
7. Embedded maps with both indoor and outdoor mapping.
8. Download offline maps without internet accessibility.

Features of Bing Maps

1. Traffic conditions for better understanding of travel. 
2. Detailed public transport routes, street views, schedules, and directions. 
3. Satellite images for earth and terrain views. 
4. A complete local search results in driving mode. 

So here’s the bottom line. Google Maps have always been the first choice for most of the internet users today. 

But, if you want to explore and don’t get stuck with a single option, Microsoft Bing is not a bad option. 

Is Bing Better than Google?

The biggest confusion that users have is selecting the one between Bing and Google. Although both platforms offer phenomenal services, including AI-driven search results, voice assistant, and image search, you have to choose one for your business. 

So, it’s better to make a list of personal preferences and then analyze which search engine best suits your operational needs.

If you count on market data, Google has a massive consumer base, but a renowned brand like Samsung has kept Microsoft Bing as its default browser. 

Thus, evaluate your business needs and choose the one that fits your requirements. 

Cheers!