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Comparison between Bing and Google

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SUBMITTED BY:

SHREYANSHU BHUSHAN [2016118415]

ABHYUDAYA SINGH TAK [2016118398]

INDEX

• A Brief History of Bing and Google

• Bing vs Google: Competitive Rivals

• Differences Between Bing and Google

o Bing vs Google: Differences in Ranking Factors

▪ Technical SEO

▪ Bing Examines Metadata More Closely

▪ Bing Prefers Official Domain Types

▪ Off-Page SEO

▪ Bing Pays Attention to Social Signals

▪ Multimedia Content

▪ Google’s Mobile-First Indexing

o Bing vs Google: Beyond Ranking Factors

▪ Google Has Additional SERP Features

▪ Local Search and User Proximity

▪ Bing and Google Maps Side by Side

▪ Voice Search – Bing and Google Comparison

o Bing vs Google: Paid Advertising

▪ A Brief History of Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising

▪ Differences Between Google Ads and Microsoft

Advertising

• Rounding Up

• References

A Brief History of Bing and Google In the early 90s, just as the Internet was being adopted by home users, a site called

Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web was created. The brainchild of Stanford graduates,

Jerry Yang and David Filo, this site would go on to become Yahoo in April 1994. As you

can see from the image below, Yahoo was initially a database of websites that was

organised through a hierarchical system rather than a searchable index of pages.

A screenshot of Yahoo’s homepage in 1996 from web.archive.org

The next big move in the history of search engines came in 1998 when two Stanford PhD

students– Larry Page and Sergey Brin – founded Google. It started out as a research

project known as BackRub, so-called due to its ranking method of checking site

backlinks to determine relative authority. This was what gave Google the edge over its

competitors, and continues to do so to this day.

As an interesting aside, the history of Google centres around the decision regarding its

name and the etymology behind it. The name Google derives from the word Googol, a

number equivalent to ten raised to the power of a hundred (10100). Page and Brin

attempted to secure the domain Googol.com at the time, but changed the name to

Google when they found that it wasn’t available

The history of Microsoft’s Bing, on the other hand, is much more recent. Descended from

Windows Live Search and MSN Search, Bing came into being when these services were

amalgamated and rebranded in July 2009. The first major update occurred in August

2011, when Microsoft introduced a new index-serving technology known as “Tiger”. Bing

was then completely redesigned in 2015, followed by updates that penalised keyword

stuffing and enhanced local search.

Google’s algorithm updates have been well documented, starting out sporadically with

one in 2000 and another in 2002, then becoming increasingly more frequent over the

years. In the present climate, hundreds of search algorithm changes are made every year,

ranging from minor changes to far-reaching broad core algorithm updates that shake up

the SERPs. By contrast, Bing algorithm changes are rarely spoken about in the SEO

community.

Bing vs Google: Competitive Rivals Although Google still dominates the UK search market, Microsoft has seen some

incremental gains over the past few years. According to data from Statista, Google

retains a 87.5% market share in the UK. This same source suggests that Yahoo’s share of

the market has fallen to just 2.12%, but Bing has seen an uplift over the past few years,

rising from 6.85% in 2018 to its current share of 8.82%. Together, Microsoft-owned

search engines have nearly 11% of the UK market share.

This kind of competition is healthy, prompting companies to enhance their service

provision and think of ways to stand out from the crowd; in many ways, competition

drives innovation and technological progress. It is largely as a result of the intense rivalry

between Bing and Google, for example, that points of difference have emerged between

them – in competitive climates, differentiation enables brands to set themselves apart

from the rest of the market and survive.

Differences Between Bing and Google Taken purely at face value, some would argue that Bing and Google don’t appear to be

all that different. True, they are both search engines that offer paid advertising and

follow the same broad ranking principles, taking into account sites’ backlinks, technical

health, and so on. Yet when we search for the same phrase in both of these search

engines, we get drastically different organic results. The purpose of the next section is, in

part, to explore why this is.

Bing vs Google: Differences in Ranking Factors

Whilst there are many similarities in the SEO ranking factors for Google and Bing, it’s also

clear to see that there are significant differences in the weighting applied to certain

ranking factors when we compare Bing and Google results. Of course, you don’t have to

overhaul your entire website to optimise it for Bing, but there are some tweaks you can

make to ensure that you rank highly on both search engines.

Technical SEO

Many technical factors are accounted for in the ranking algorithms for both Bing and

Google, from mobile-friendliness to site speed. Investing in optimising behind-the-

scenes structure and on-page technical SEO for your site can yield positive results on

both Google and Bing, although there are certain discrepancies between the factors that

they deem important.

When implementing permanent redirects In SEO, it’s good housekeeping to use 301

redirects as opposed to temporary 302 redirects. The use of 302 redirects can sometimes

cause indexing issues with Google, but Bing’s system works by automatically interpreting

a 302 redirect as a 301 after it has been crawled a few times. 302 redirects are therefore

unlikely to cause any problems with Bing. To ensure your site is optimised for both Bing

and Google, however, it’s important not to use 302 redirects when a permanent redirect

is required.

Bing Examines Metadata More Closely

Many of the differences between the ranking processes of Bing and Google sit at the

intersection of technical and content in SEO. For example, the treatment of metadata

and other on-page signals differs significantly between the two search engines, largely

due to the different ways in which they attempt to understand sites across the web.

Bing relies more heavily on conventional methods to understand content such as

keywords in the domain, page titles, and metadata; Google, on the other hand, is less

interested in these factors due to its superior interpretation of language in context

(particularly since the advent of the RankBrain and BERT updates). All in all, this makes it

more difficult for SEOs to optimise for Google than Bing.

In particular, meta descriptions play a far greater role in Bing’s assessment of a website

than Google’s. These short, summary descriptions of a page’s content play an active role

in Bing’s ranking process, whilst they are simply used as pithy adverts for pages within

the Google SERPs. Similarly, Bing pays more attention to the use of anchor text and will

reward sites that match anchor text with page title, whereas Google doesn’t focus much

on this element.

Your approach to SEO should take into account the ranking processes of both Bing and

Google – none of the elements discussed here are mutually exclusive and neither of

these search engines are likely to penalise sites that are also optimised for the other.

With Google’s complex understanding of language, it’s important to write for humans

and not over-optimise; at the same time, however, it’s possible to use keywords in your

URLS, titles, and metadata without keyword stuffing. As with content in general, the trick

is to strike the perfect balance between two.

Bing Prefers Official Domain Types

Bing prefers established content that has either been live for quite some time or has

gained a large amount of traffic. This preference is also reflected in the fact that Bing

favours more official top-level domains such as .gov or .edu, whereas Google considers

commercial or popular websites to be just as valuable in many situations. Whilst you

can’t optimise for either search engine in relation to these preferences, it’s important to

compare Bing and Google results because your site may be favoured by one of the

search engine’s ranking processes due to its domain type.

Off-Page SEO

We’ve already noted that Google’s ranking process originated with a PhD project called

BackRub, which used backlinks to determine relative site authority. Even now, the search

engine still utilises backlink analysis as a primary method for ranking websites: the more

links to your site, the better it’s authority (and the better it will stand out in the search

results). Although still a deciding factor in ranking, Bing does not place quite as much

importance on backlinks.

Despite the fact that backlinks are more important for Google SEO, there are some

significant commonalities between the two search engines’ treatment of links. In both

cases, it is not just the quantity of backlinks that determines authority but also the

quality and relevance. Links from well-established sites that are relevant to the recipient

site pass on more link equity than their less authoritative counterparts.

Bing Pays Attention to Social Signals

In 2016, Google’s Gary Illyes was asked if the search engine incorporates social signals

(e.g. consumer-brand interaction on Facebook) into its ranking algorithms. His concise

answer: “no, we don’t”. Bing, however, is much more keen on social media engagement,

a preference that is reflected by its use of social signals as a ranking factor. Pages that

have earned a greater number of likes, shares, and retweets are more likely to rank

highly on Bing. Some form of social media marketing should be integrated into your

digital marketing strategy by now, but Bing gives you an added incentive in the form of

ranking boosts for strong social media performance.

Multimedia Content

Contrary to popular belief, Google’s crawlers have been able to understand JavaScript

sections of your site for a while, and this will only improve over time: in 2015, a post on

the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog stated that “as long as you’re not blocking

Googlebot from crawling your JavaScript or CSS files, we are generally able to render

and understand your pages like modern browsers.” By contrast, Bing’s Webmaster

Guidelines caution that “rich media (Flash, JavaScript, etc.) can lead to Bing not being

able to crawl through navigation, or not see content embedded in a webpage.”

Taken together, the responses from Google and Bing provide a few useful takeaways

when it comes to rich media and SEO:

• Firstly, sites should certainly avoid burying any important links on a page within

JavaScript, as these may not be read by all search engines.

• Secondly, the general advice provided by Bing on this should be suitable for both

Google and Bing SEO: “to avoid any potential issues, consider implementing a down-

level experience which includes the same content elements and links as your rich version

does.”

Here, the term ‘down-level experience’ refers to the content that would be rendered on

the site without all of the rich media (i.e. how some crawlers would see the page). Use

the SEO Browser tool to check how your site appears to crawlers and make sure that all

of the important content is visible.

Google’s Mobile-First Indexing

Most SEOs will be aware of Google’s mobile-first indexing policy and its implications. In

short, Google uses the mobile version of a site for indexing and ranking purposes,

making it important for all mobile content and metadata to be optimised fully and match

that of the desktop version. (In practice, it’s best to avoid having separate mobile and

desktop sites at all by implementing responsive design.)

According to a recent announcement, mobile-first indexing will be applied to all

websites by the end of 2020. Any sites that still use a mobile version must optimise it

appropriately and improve the mobile user experience (UX) where possible – read

our guide on mobile-first indexing for more information on this.

Bing has a very different policy from Google when it comes to indexing content. Bing’s

Christi Olson has confirmed that Bing has no plans to implement any equivalent mobile-

first indexing policy, stating that “we maintain a single index that is optimized for both

mobile and desktop to ensure our users continue to receive the most relevant, fresh, and

consistent results no matter where they are.” Despite this, you should still allow Google’s

mobile-first indexing to guide your SEO and UX efforts (as outlined in our guide)

because doing so will not hurt your performance with Bing.

Bing vs Google: Beyond Ranking Factors

We’ve covered a range of areas in which Bing’s ranking process varies from Google’s.

However, there are plenty of other differences between the two search engines aside

from the algorithms they use. In particular, Bing and Google differ in terms of SERP

features, local search, maps, voice search, and paid advertising.

Google Has Additional SERP Features

Bing has kept pace with Google throughout many SERP feature updates over the last few

years. Whilst many of the following SERP features were first created by Google

(excluding the Twitter SERP feature), both search engines now use them:

• Knowledge cards/panels/carousels

• Maps (local packs)

• News (top stories)

• Images

• Video

• Sitelinks

• Mini-sitelinks

• Twitter

• In-depth articles

• Featured snippets (text/list/table)

• Recipes

• Apps

• Reviews

• Related searches

• Jobs

• Flights

• Shopping

That said, there are some examples where Bing has decided not to follow the path taken

by its main competitor in this area. The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) SERP features

that Google serves to mobile users are a conspicuous absence in the Bing search results,

as are people also ask (PAA) boxes. Depending on your point of view, the increased

implementation of SERP features across both search engines could be considered a

blessing or a curse.

Some SEOs rail against the proliferation of featured snippets and people also ask (PAA)

boxes in Google’s SERPs, suggesting that they lower click-through rates (CTRs) for all

sites on the first page. Indeed, since Google removed pages that have featured snippets

from the organic listings below them, this view has become more and more popular –

particularly within ecommerce, some sites are opting out of featured snippets in favour

of a listing using the no-snippet meta tag.

Others within the digital marketing community are only too happy to vie for SERP real

estate by striving to obtain featured snippets and the like. It’s true that featured snippets

can reduce CTRs in situations where a satisfactory answer is supplied within the snippet

itself (why would you click through to a page if your question has already been answered

in the SERPs?) However, obtaining featured snippets for certain long-tail keywords can

enable sites to target users with niche questions and bring in relevant traffic.

Local Search and User Proximity

Local searches via Google have increased dramatically over the past five years. According

to Hubspot, 46% of all Google searches in 2019 were looking for local information and

72% of consumers who submit a local query visit a store within five miles. The rise of

hyperlocal search is also evidenced by Google Trends data on “near me” searches over

the past five years:

Google Trends data showing the increase in UK search volume for “near me” since 2014

The slight dip in “near me” queries during the latter half of 2019 can be explained by the

fact that SERPs are already tailored to the user’s location when Google location tracking

is enabled. Indeed, the use of location-based search modifiers is superfluous in the case

of many queries.

We’ve established that location-based searches are an increasingly popular

phenomenon, but how do Bing and Google compare with each other in relation to local

search? The most significant point of difference is in the types of results that these

search engines will display.

In response to a local search, both Bing and Google display a map of the local area with

pins indicating the locations of businesses or organisations that are relevant to the

search. The key difference here is that Google focuses on the user’s immediate vicinity by

default, whereas Bing provides a larger view of the wider area.

Bing results for “restaurants near me” with a wide-focus map

Google results for “restaurants near me” with a slightly more zoomed-in map

This hyperlocal vs local pattern also applies in terms of the top pages that Bing and

Google will provide for local searches: Google tends to serve top listings that are very

close to the user, whilst Bing will provide the most relevant listing from a slightly wider

radius. In the example above, the top restaurant for Google is closer to the user’s actual

location than the one provided by Bing. In 2019, Google updated its local search ranking

process to prioritise user proximity, so this is unsurprising.

Bing and Google Maps Side by Side

Bing Maps and Google Maps are both integral components of their respective search

engines – these map functionalities have become widely used and are now central to

Bing and Google’s offerings. We’ve briefly touched upon the differences between them

in the context of local search, but it’s worth digging a little deeper into this.

At first glance, there aren’t too many visual differences between the user interfaces (UIs)

of Bing Maps and Google Maps, as you can see from these side-by-side screenshots of

the two:

Results for “Nottingham” in Bing Maps

Results for “Nottingham” in Google Maps

Both maps functions provide the user with a knowledge panel containing information

about the area or business, in addition to direction, sharing, and saving functionalities.

The main section of both UIs is taken up by the map itself – in both cases, the map

allows the user to zoom in and move about.

The most significant differences between Bing Maps and Google Maps come down to

the directions they provide and the data that goes with this. The estimated journey times

and accompanying route information differs between the two web mapping services.

Google appears to give slightly longer estimates: when searching for directions between

Impression’s Fothergill House office in Nottingham and St Pancras Station in London by

car, Bing estimates a 2 hour 39 minute journey and Google suggests 2 hours 45 minutes.

Other journeys produce a similar disparity, with Google tending to add around 3-5% of

the estimated journey time that was suggested by Bing in each case.

Although not important in SEO, it’s interesting that Google Maps provides the user with

additional information regarding the fastest route between the destinations. When

searching for Impression–St Pancras directions, for example, Google Maps highlights the

fact that the chosen route avoids the closure of a major bridge along the way, whereas

Bing Maps makes no reference to this potentially significant closure.

Voice Search – Bing and Google Comparison

According to data from an Adobe survey in July 2019, 48% of consumers use voice

search for “general web searches” and 39% used virtual personal assistants (VPAs) via

their smart speaker devices. Clearly, voice search represents a huge opportunity for SEOs

and digital marketers more generally, but what are the key differences between the

functionalities provided by Bing and Google?

Previous commentators have suggested that the two search engines offer different

benefits to users of voice search. Writing for Search Engine Watch, Clark Boyd has

argued that Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortana, has superior speech recognition but

less accurate understanding of context than the Google Assistant. The point regarding

the understanding of context makes sense when we consider recent Google

developments such as the BERT algorithm update.

As mentioned above, many voice searches take place via a physical smart speaker device

such as an Amazon Echo. Given that these devices are one of the primary means by

which voice searches are made, we might want to know which of the two major search

engines’ results are used to answer queries most often as a further point of contrast.

There are no published statistics regarding the number of smart speaker VPA queries

that are answered by Bing in comparison to Google. However, three of the four VPAs –

Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa – use Bing for this purpose, with

only the Google Assistant providing answers from Google. As such, we can assume that

the majority of smart speaker users are receiving answers to their questions from Bing

rather than Google.

Whatever the source of the results provided to users, the process of optimising your

website for voice search remains the same. Fortunately for SEOs, this means that the

same optimisation techniques will help to ensure that your content is used for voice

search results powered by both Bing and Google. For more information on optimising

your site for voice search, take a look at our dedicated article on the subject.

Bing vs Google: Paid Advertising

We’ve now discussed the vast majority of differences between the two search engine

giants when comparing them from an organic search perspective. All that remains in this

Bing and Google comparison is to explore how the two search engines vary in terms of

their paid advertising services: Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) and Microsoft

Advertising (formerly Bing Ads). Here at Impression, we believe in the value of both

platforms, offering Microsoft Advertising Management and Google Ads Management.

A Brief History of Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising is a much younger paid ad offering than Google Ads, beginning

life as MSN adCenter in 2006. Prior to this, all of the PPC advertising on MSN Search was

supplied by Overture and then Yahoo. Microsoft was definitely late to the party by

comparison to the other major search engine providers, but soon realised that there was

a burgeoning market to tap into.

By the time MSN adCenter was launched, Google Adwords was in its prime and had

been running for 6 years, putting the new challenger on the backfoot from the outset. To

begin with, its business model was distinct from the present offering: utilising a

subscription-based model, Google would set up and manage campaigns on behalf of

businesses. All of this changed in 2005 with the release of the Adwords self-service

portal, the basis for the contemporary Google Ads service.

Differences Between Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising

When starting out with PPC advertising, the first thing that many businesses want to

know is which platform has the greatest reach. As a result of Google’s dominance in the

search market from an early stage, Google Ads enables sites to reach a far larger volume

of users than Microsoft Advertising.

That said, Microsoft has made several strategic moves over the years in an effort to eat

into Google’s share of the paid search market:

• Following the launch of advertising on Facebook in 2006, Microsoft teamed up with the

social network and adverts from its adCenter were published across the site (although

Facebook replaced this by launching its own ad service the year after).

• With the launch of Bing in 2010, Microsoft partnered with Yahoo. The partnership

enabled Bing ads to be syndicated on the Yahoo network.

• At present, Microsoft Advertising in the single source of advertising across the Yahoo

and AOL networks.

Despite Microsoft’s best efforts, Google Ads remains the dominant force in PPC. But with

this position comes great competition between businesses for Google’s SERP space,

which can be off-putting for smaller firms and new users to paid search. Achieving the

top paid positions on Google is far more difficult than on Bing, requiring high quality

scores and significant levels of investment.

This brings us on to another key difference between Google Ads and Microsoft

Advertising: the cost. The cost per click (CPC) on individual keywords tends to be lower

with Microsoft Advertising than with its paid search rival, with aggregate effects on the

cost of campaigns as a whole. (Keep in mind, however, that this is not the case in some

verticals.) Whilst costs are generally lower with Microsoft, there’s a trade-off between

price and audience volume – costs may be higher on Google Ads, but you’ll reach a

much larger audience.

The composition of Bing’s audience likewise differs from Google’s. The challenger search

engine is typically frequented by older users with higher levels of education than

Google’s average user, so working with the UK’s second-favourite search engine can

really benefit businesses that target this demographic specifically. Even for brands that

have adopted a mass market targeting strategy, spreading your paid search advertising

across both channels can help to ensure even coverage.

In relation to this, there’s also variation between the targeting options offered by the two

paid ad services. Both platforms enable sites to target specific user segments based on

characteristics such as demographics, increasing the efficiency of ad spend. Google Ads

offers a wide range of targeting options, from remarketing to dynamic search ads;

Microsoft Advertising provides several targeting options but is generally considered to

be less advanced than its main competitor in this respect.

However, a recent update to the targeting in Microsoft Advertising does allow you to use

data from users’ LinkedIn profiles to create target segments. This information can be

really useful for certain types of business that want to target users who work in specific

industries (recruitment firms, for example, would benefit from this). Working at a more

granular level, it can also be used as a tool to target employees of particular companies

with ads. The LinkedIn targeting function is exclusive to Microsoft Advertising and

LinkedIn Ads.

For businesses trying to decide which PPC platform to choose, we would recommend

using both of them as part of an integrated digital marketing strategy. As we’ve seen,

each search engine has its own unique flaws, merits, and audiences, so sites often see

the best performance overall when combining the two and serving their ads to both

groups of users.

Rounding Up This Bing vs Google comparison has explored a broad range of issues. Starting with the

history of the two firms and their competitive rivalry, we went on to consider the main

differences in their organic ranking processes. This section put forward a number of

actionable recommendations around how to optimise sites for both Bing and Google,

including:

• Never use a 302 redirect when a permanent redirect is required.

• Optimise your URLs and metadata – but make sure your content appeals to humans, too!

• Focus your off-page efforts on gaining high-quality links from relevant, authoritative

sites.

• Encourage users to engage with your brand via social media (Bing takes social media

metrics into account in its organic ranking process).

• For pages that contain lots of multimedia content, ensure that crawlers can read all of

the important information. To do this, create a down-level experience with the same

elements as the rich version, expressing important details through HTML (you can check

how crawlers see your page using the SEO Browser tool).

• If your site still has separate desktop and mobile versions, ensure that they are both

optimised in the same way and that the mobile UX is seamless.

This report has also provided a comparison of Bing and Google beyond ranking factors,

looking at SERP features, local search, maps functionalities, and voice search. There are a

number of important takeaways from this section:

• Google offers additional SERP features such as the AMP elements and PAA boxes.

• Bing’s local search scours a wider radius by default, whereas Google tends to focus on

listings that are in closer proximity to the user.

• Google Maps estimates longer journey times than Bing Maps, but also provides more

important information regarding the route you have selected.

• In relation to voice search, the Google Assistant has a greater understanding of linguistic

context but less accurate speech recognition than Microsoft’s Cortana (for tips on

optimising for voice search through both search engines, see our blog on this issue).

• Only Google smart speakers and Google Assistant-enabled devices use Google results

for VPA responses, whereas Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa all use

Bing results.

The third section of this report compared the two search engines’ paid advertising

services (Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising). It’s worth remembering from this

section that Google’s offering predates Bings by six years, having been launched as

Google AdWords in 2000. Another key point to take away is that Microsoft has made

several attempts to obtain a share of the PPC market over the years but Google remains

the dominant force in this area.

References • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_(search_engine)

• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bing-search-engine

• https://searchengineland.com/meet-bing-microsofts-new-search-engine-20093

• https://lifehacker.com/search-engine-showdown-google-vs-bing-1739263052

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search

• https://searchengineland.com/guide/google-searching-search-engines

• https://www.towermarketing.net/blog/google-best-search-engine/