Overview of Microsoft Search in Bing. What is microsoft bing

Google offers connected products, such as the Google Reader, which provides additional background information. Since Google is rich in information, using linked products will add value to your business.

Bing vs Google: Which One is the best 2021?

When you think about search engines, the first thing that may come to your mind is Google. However, there are many different search engines from around the world, including Baidu (China) and Yandex (Russia). In this review, we’ll take an in-depth look at the main Bing vs Google features that each search engine offers.

Fortunately, search engines have changed the way people try to find their information. While all search engines are similar and look similar, they are not. Without a doubt, Google and Bing are the most famous search engines in the world.

To date, many Western countries have adopted Google as their preferred search engine. This doesn’t mean Bing is less worth your time. Consequently, Bing has put a lot of effort into keeping up with this great giant.

However, is Microsoft’s search engine so advanced that it poses a huge threat to Google? Let’s find out.

Introducing the Contenders

You may be familiar with these two search engines, but as a refreshment, let’s take a look at what they are.

About Bing

The Bing.com search engine was developed by Microsoft and originally in 2006. It was known as Windows Live Search before being completely renamed Bing in 2009. Initially, Windows Live Search was launched to compete with Google Search.

After Bing was launched, their first big update was dubbed “Tiger”. And it introduced their initial indexing technology. It’s worth noting that Bing.com doesn’t update its algorithm frequently compared to Google. This is crucial as changing your algorithm can affect your website ranking. Therefore, such changes should be implemented accordingly.

About Google

This search engine was created in 1998 by a search company with the main emphasis on backlink authority analysis. Over time, Google has grown to offer over 50 web services. And today it is used by 70 percent of the world when searching on the Internet.

His initial service (i.e., backlinks) helped move Google to where it is today, an industry leader. Compared to Bing, Google changes its algorithm more often. It ranges from huge updates to small changes. As a result, this ensures that the Google search engine page remains the best it can be.

Bing has a 71/100 US customer satisfaction index, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Where users can start a search

To help you find work or school results, Microsoft Search on Bing supports multiple entry points. Depending on the entry point, users may see the All Results page or the Work or School results page:

Search for an entry point	Takes users to
Bing’s home page	All the results pages
Job search start page	Job results page
Windows Search	Internal site, file, All results, or Work or School results page, depending on the match selected
Microsoft Edge address bar	All the results pages
Shortcut to work with Microsoft Edge	Job results page
Microsoft Edge new tab page	All the results pages
Built-in search field on an intranet or internal application	Work or school performance page

Getting started with Microsoft Search in Bing

Microsoft search in Bing is turned on by default for everyone in your organization. To help protect users, Microsoft Search on Bing uses enhanced privacy and security measures. For more information, see Security and Privacy in Microsoft Search on Bing.

If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft Search on Bing, we recommend that you refer to the Microsoft Search in Bing Admin Essentials Guide for configuration and deployment information. To increase user awareness of Microsoft Search, our conversion kit includes training and communication materials.

Add appropriate images and videos when creating content. Bing extracts information from signatures, titles, transcripts, and structured data. However, add the information as HTML text, not embedded in media.

Comparing Google vs. Microsoft Bing’s Functionality

From the point of view of search functionality, the two search engines are similar, but Google offers more basic features:

Function	Google	Microsoft Bing
Text search	Yes	Yes
Video search engine	Yes	Yes
Picture search	Yes	Yes
Maps	Yes	Yes
News	Yes	Yes
Shopping	Yes	Yes
Books	Yes	No
Flights	Yes	No
Finances	Yes	No
Scientific literature	Yes	No

How Google & Microsoft Bing Differ in Size of Index and Crawling

“The Google search engine index contains hundreds of billions of web pages and is well over 100,000,000 gigabytes.”

Even so, even Google can’t index the entire web. It just won’t happen.

That’s why it’s so important to use structured data. Provides a feed for your content so Google can understand it better, which can help you qualify for rich results and get more clicks and impressions.

Microsoft Bing has not released similar data. However, this site estimating the size of a search engine’s index places the Microsoft Bing index at between 8 and 14 billion web pages.

Both search engines shared some information about their approaches to web indexing.

“Bingbot uses an algorithm to determine which sites to index, how often, and how many pages to download from each site. The goal is to minimize Bingbot’s crawl footprint on websites while ensuring that the freshest content is available.”

At about the same time that the above statement was made, Google’s John Mueller said:

“I think the hardest part is that we don’t crawl the URLs with the same frequency all the time. So we’ll crawl some urls daily. Some urls may be weekly. Different URLs every few months and maybe even every six months. That’s why we try to find the right balance so as not to overload your server.”

Google has a mobile-first index, while Microsoft Bing takes a different position and has no plans to apply the mobile-first indexing policy.

Instead, Microsoft Bing maintains a single index optimized for both desktop and mobile devices, so it’s important to make sure your site is optimized, loads quickly, and gives users what they need.

Google has transformed into more than just a search engine with products like Gmail, Maps, Chrome OS, Android OS, YouTube, and more.

Microsoft Bing also offers email via Outlook as well as other services such as Office Online or OneDrive.

Unlike Google, however, it does not have its own operating system. Instead, it uses Windows Phone 8 or iOS on Apple devices.

Now let’s take a look at where Bing is at par with Google – or better.

Even then, three of the four VPAs – Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana – use Bing.com for this. And the Google Assistant only offers replies from Google. Even then, we can assume that most smart speaker users get responses from Bing instead of Google.

Bing revenue

In fiscal 2021, Microsoft posted $ 8.53 billion in search advertising revenue. Increase of 10.2% from $ 7.74 billion in 2020

Not all of this can be attributed to Bing. Microsoft owns many additional search ventures. The Business Search engine includes Microsoft Advertising as well as several third-party partnerships (e.g with the Verizon Media group).

Here’s a table of Microsoft’s 2016 search ad revenue:

Fiscal year (ends June 30)	Search ad revenue
2016	$ 5.43 billion
2017	$ 6.22 billion
2018	$ 7.01 billion
2019	$ 7.63 billion
2020	$ 7.74 billion
2021	$ 8.53 billion

Bing is available in 238 countries.

source: Bing

Bing recorded 1.066 billion visits to computers and mobile devices in September 2021. Slight decrease from 1.067 billion visits in December 2020.

Here is a table showing the total number of monthly visits to Bing as of May 2019:

Date	Total number of visits
May 2019	1.034 billion
June 2019	998 million
July 2019	998 million
August 2019	965.5 million
September 2019	950 million
October 2019	963.5 million
November 2019	915.5 million
December 2019	930.5 million
January 2020	917.5 million
February 2020	849.5 million
March 2020	918.5 million
April 2020	931 million
May 2020	936.5 million
June 2020	930 million
July 2020	982 million
August 2020	1.006 billion
September 2020	986 million
October 2020	1.021 billion
November 2020	1.012 billion
December 2020	1.067 billion
January 2021	1.034 billion
June 2021	1.085 billion
September 2021	1.066 billion

When you think about search engines, the first thing that may come to your mind is Google. However, there are many different search engines from around the world, including Baidu (China) and Yandex (Russia). In this review, we’ll take an in-depth look at the main Bing vs Google features that each search engine offers.

A seemingly lost-battle

Until September 2008, Microsoft was struggling to compete with Google and Yahoo in the search advertising industry (market share: 8.3%, 63% and 20%, respectively). Jay Girotto, member of the Microsoft search team, said:

“We’re chasing Google tail lights and losing money” .

Microsoft’s “supporter position” was indeed very costly due to the market’s tendency to win-take-all. Search engines are two-sided platforms where advertisers pay to access user information. By connecting both sides, platforms create value: the more queries, the higher the quality of the results; the more users, the higher the value for advertisers; the more advertisers, the more likely you are to match. Network and cross effects are then in play and the key to success in this market. This is where Microsoft is at a disadvantage. Users and advertisers want to be part of the largest network to add value to the platform. However, in a market valued at $ 20 billion, Microsoft’s market share was only up to 8.3%. This generated insufficient interactions for the platform to take off and begin a positive downward spiral that would feed itself through network effects. In short, critical mass has not been reached for Microsoft to be able to count on network effects and compete seriously for online advertising.

Besides, Microsoft was not able to offer all of Google’s functions (the ability to deal with difficult technical problems such as managing large farms of thousands of servers, designing customized operating systems for them, ranking an increasing number of documents, etc.) while Google matched all its innovations (e.g opinion index). Thus, many considerations seemed to speak in favor of a decision not to invest in this market in order to allocate valuable resources to other companies. This battle did seem like a lost one by now, and every dollar spent trying to win it could be considered wasted. However, Microsoft has made a significant investment in launching an entirely new search engine: Bing. Why?

Three reasons to cling to

There seem to be three main reasons: 1 Microsoft interdependencies and complementarity, 2 the value of a closed customer base, and 3 access to user information.

1. More than ever, Microsoft’s corporate strategy is “linked” because all of its companies aim to compete as one platform, with users on one side and third parties (such as advertisers) on the other. This is due to the desire of users to receive compatible and related services on one platform. The web-based mobile interface actually replaces the desktop interface, making the search business platform increasingly central to Microsoft’s strategy (as other companies like email, documents, etc benefit from user traffic). Consequently, if it fails to reverse its shortcomings in the search market, it would undermine the position of its other companies by distracting users, risking a competitive loss in much of its business portfolio”:

“The key to success for this whole thing was getting browser-side ubiquity ”.

The concepts of network effects, cost of change and standard setting explain this quote; as more queries lead to better quality results (due to the refinement of the search engine with the information provided), users will not switch as they get used to and trust one search engine. Moreover, they will likely use other services of this platform as it is convenient (see above). Finally, all of this is further enhanced when more third parties are attracted or when an encoding language standard is spread.

So, if Google is left alone in this market, it will be able to more effectively expand its business (its established standard and closed customer base) to other markets. It is therefore part of Microsoft’s global strategy to stay in the search industry. In this regard, it was strong enough (ie its 2008 operating cash flow was $ 22 billion) to afford to remain a “costly observer” to catch up with Google and protect other companies.

2. As this market has strong network effects and switching costs, the customer base attracted today is very valuable when it closes tomorrow. Hence, the revenue that Microsoft would give up now to attract users will be outweighed later by enjoying a closed customer base. This is known as a bargain and then rip off strategy: the goal is to increase customer traffic on the platform and get them used to it. In the same vein, Andreessen said about the web browser market:

“If you don’t have a market share now, you won’t have any income later. … Whoever gets the volume wins in the end ”.

Even though Google has a large customer base, I think Microsoft can still hope to steal market share in the coming years, especially as the search is still beginning. The battle between search engines to improve performance (i.e., search relevancy) is indeed fierce and never-ending. Moreover, prior to the launch of Bing, Microsoft managed to fill the ‘relevance.

3. From a strategic point of view, Microsoft cannot afford to miss the ability to directly access the information of millions of users. This issue is central to all real-world activities, but the “user information market” is primarily the foundation of any business platform’s future. For example, Microsoft and Yahoo were quick to mimic the Google Toolbar when it appeared due to the benefits of tracking user behavior online. This mine actually makes it possible to better tailor the services to the needs of users, as well as increase advertising revenues. Therefore, Microsoft cannot afford to traverse the competitive environment to obtain this information, nor to further consolidate its leadership in this privileged access.

The first version of Bing was MSN Search, which was launched in 1998. MSN Search used the search results from Inktomi and included an index, search engine and crawler. Windows Live Search replaced MSN Search in 2006 and changed its name to Bing three years later.

Bing SEO vs. Google SEO: What’s the Difference?

SEO experts and digital marketers continually compare Bing to Google for common features such as local search, ranking criteria, off-page and on-page signals.

Here’s a table that shows the main differences between Bing and Google

It is not a significant ranking factor

Huge ranking factor if you want to appear on the SERP

The main ranking factor for off-page SEO and thematic authority building

Organic Search Results Ranking

It prefers older sites with official domain extensions such as .edu and .gov

It favors any website with great content

Transparent information about ranking factors

No information about ranking factors

Better video search with large thumbnails that let you play videos without leaving Bing

List of videos with a small thumbnail that redirects to the video’s location. It tends to favor YouTube videos over other platforms

Not as solid as Google

Better shopping suggestion compared to Bing. Google can return products at the best online prices from a variety of sites

Not as many basic functions as Google does

Same functionality as Bing but with additional features such as Flights, Books, Scientific Literature, and Finance

No official data available, but estimated to be between 8 and 14 billion

Over 100,000,000 gigabytes and hundreds of billions of websites

Optimizes for the exact match keyword in meta tags and content

Smart enough to understand your intent and rank the page for your desired keyword

No plans to adopt a mobile optimized index

Adopts mobile-first indexing rules

Better than Google search with higher quality images. More filtering options to search by color, image size and type

More images to look at than Microsoft’s Bing

Local search results

Slightly wider radius

Gives priority to your actual location when showing recommendations and local search results

Backlinks

Bing is behind Google when it comes to evaluating link functions. While Google indexes all the content on your site, Bing removes from the index pages that don’t have enough link value to rank in search results. Therefore, you need at least one backlink to get your page positioned on Bing.

Organic Ranking

Both Bing and Google prefer larger brands because these brands attract more branded links. However, Bing may struggle to distinguish brands from similar competitors. Bing tends to favor old sites with official domain extensions like .edu and .gov. On the other hand, Google will evaluate popular or commercial websites with high-quality content.

Content

Bing looks at content the same way it looks at websites. They prefer content that has built a reputation over a long period of time. According to content marketer Maria-Cristina Muntean, Bing also prefers multimedia content such as videos, high-quality images and audio. Infographics are great if they add value to the original content.

Conversely, Google rewards sites that post new or updated content. They will also rate your content whether it contains multimedia or not. However, both Bing and Google agree that you should optimize for keywords and search intent.

Technical Factors

Technical SEO and on-page factors play a key role in both Bing and Google rankings. To rank a page, Bing relies on exact match keywords in meta tags, page titles, and other related keywords. Google’s algorithm is more developed. If the content matches the keyword’s intent, it can look at the keyword variations and synonyms and rank the page for the right keywords.

How to Optimize Your Website for Bing SEO

Claim Your Business on Bing Places

Visit Bing Places for Business to submit your business. As with Google My Business, the goal is to deliver relevant local search results to users. Be sure to update your site index after registering your business with Bing.

Get Verified

If you’ve been in business for a while, chances are good you’re on the Bing List. Only add your business if you cannot find its listing. Bing then sends an authorization code to verify your listing. The code can be sent by phone, SMS, post or e-mail. Bing will publish your listing after verification is complete.

Add High-Quality Images

Since Bing prefers multimedia classified ads, add high-quality photos of your business, the products you sell, and anything else that might encourage a click on your site.

Encourage Customers to Leave Reviews

Reviews are the lifeblood of local businesses. Potential customers read online reviews to check the quality of your products and gain insight into the experience they will have with your business. Encourage customers to write reviews about their experiences and share photos.

However, don’t be afraid of negative or imperfect reviews. Your business looks suspicious if everyone is leaving a 5-star review.

Use Bing Webmaster Tools URL to Index Your Site

Now that you’ve registered your business, it’s time to index your site using Bing Webmaster Tools. First, sign up for a business account with your Microsoft login.

Then verify site ownership with an XML sitemap. Alternatively, you can insert a sitemap link in your robots.txt file which looks like this:

Tag & Categorize Your Site

Categories and tags make your site more discoverable when users search for specific queries. Organizing your content also makes it easier for Bing’s algorithm to understand your content. By using CMS WordPress, you can easily add categories and tags to any page, not just blog posts.

Include Multimedia Content

Add appropriate images and videos when creating content. Bing extracts information from signatures, titles, transcripts, and structured data. However, add the information as HTML text, not embedded in media.

Use image alt text to describe what the image is about for people who can’t see images on pages. Adding captions and subtitles to your videos provides context for Bingbots as they index pages on your site. Optimize images to reduce file size without affecting quality.

Use Relevant Keywords

Bing’s algorithm is not as developed as Google. Instead, they rely more on using exact match keywords. Now the goal is to optimize for Bing without compromising Google SEO efforts. So I would not advise you to add keywords everywhere for the sake of ranking. Instead, use relevant keywords a few times, optimize for secondary keywords, and make sure to use descriptive text related to your main keyword.

For example, if you are talking about “Bing vs. Google ”, you don’t spam your content by repeatedly using a keyword, even if it doesn’t make sense. Instead, add related topics like the ones below.

If your organization has education and enterprise service plans, you can choose the Microsoft Search environment in Bing for your users, both at school and at work. For more information, see Choose a school or work search environment.

The Result

We provide data collection support, enabling developers to compare performance and quickly enter and develop new markets. Our organizational structure, with internal recruitment and training departments, has been built for rapid growth and adaptation to change.

Whether it’s aligning resource allocation or rapidly expanding into new markets, we are able to meet the global needs of the Bing team in an ever-changing environment.

We are an active partner that meets expectations and proposes process improvements to maximize the success of each client. We combine these processes with an extensive global network of specialized resources, a flexible HR strategy, and excellent project and program management to deliver high-quality data sets.

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