Google vs Bing: Which One Is Best For Your Digital Marketing Strategy

When deciding which search engine, you are going to use to start your advertising journey, most people will automatically choose Google, as it’s the most known and trusted engine in the world. However, Microsoft (Bing) has become another option for the marketing world

Some marketers use one or the other, or both at the same time. Although both engines have a lot in common, they each have their own advantages and disadvantages that will suit a certain type of business more than the other.

Wondering which search engine is right for you and your clients? It’s helpful to understand the important differences in each search engine, so you can start your marketing journey in the right direction.

 

Fun Fact: Bing accounted for 6.7% of the global search market & Google took 86.6% in 2022

 

Market Share

One of the core differences between the two search engines is the number of people who use it. As mentioned in the statistics above, Google is more widely used, with Bing’s #1 search term being “Google”. Bing is mostly used for the American audience, with 1/3 of its online enquiries taking place in the USA across all of the Microsoft properties.

There are tons of search engines out there that are competing for the largest market share, however, some aren’t even considered due to the popularity of Google.

 

Platform & Campaign Functionality:

Despite them being so similar, there are some key differences that are considered the core features which are missing From Bing, which Google supplies.

 

Indexing & Crawling:

The indexing and crawling of your site are one of the most important parts of SEO. It helps increase website visibility and gives your client/business a better chance of showing in the SERPs.

Google says:

“ The Google search index contains hundreds of billions of webpages and is well over 100,000 in size”

This shows that despite the advancements of Google, not even they can crawl an entire web.

Bing says:

“Some URLs we will crawl daily. Some URLs may be weekly. Other URLs every couple of months, maybe even every once half year or so. So, this is something that we try to find the right balance for”

 

This means that Google is able to understand the sites much better than Bing can, which gives the user’s web pages a chance to be optimised and understood with a better chance of visibility, than Bing.

Google also has a mobile-first index, with Bing having a completely different view with no plans to change, which means that Google optimises users’ web pages for mobile use which is typically the best platform for most sites, but not always.

Bing remains to index both mobile and websites at the same time, so when choosing Bing, it’s important to optimise both platforms to provide the best user experience.

 

Platforms:

There is a very high chance, that you will have one of these apps downloaded on your phone, with these being Google products, your campaigns are able to show across all these platforms, which Bing is nowhere near on par with.

• YouTube
• Gmail
• Google Maps
• Search
• Google Play

 

Microsoft Ads uses these 4 search engines to showcase their campaigns, meaning that you can have a little more visibility than just the Bing search engine, however, is incomparable to Google yet again.

• AOL
• Bing
• Yahoo
• MSN

 

You are wondering, why do people choose Microsoft Ads when there is Google?

 

Interface & Tools:

Google has a simple and clean interface that uses find easy to use to find what they are looking for. However, Bing offers more data and information whilst being more visual. Both search engines provide useful information about related topics that are being searched for.

In terms of tools, there is nothing better than a great SEO tool that helps with performance, and thankfully, both Bing and Google are on par with this feature, as they both offer a decent keyword planner and offer insights into the performance of the campaigns and the keywords being used.

Something that Google DOESN’T have, is an SEO report which tells you how to improve specific pages alongside recommendations, tips and other information to boost performance. These reports are generated biweekly which is extremely helpful.

 

Images:

Looking for a high-quality image? Choose Bing!

Although Google provides more images than Bing, Bing provides higher-quality images with a filter tool that allows you to search images by size, colour and type which helps in terms of efficiency and overall experience. Bing also offers more detail when dealing with a search from a user for example, when a user is searching for a specific movie, Bing provides actor information and where you can watch the movie. You do not get this experience with Google.

 

Optimising For Google vs Microsoft Bing:

Google’s main focus is EAT- Expertise, Authority & Trust. Google uses its algorithm to crawl content and take into account users’ search history and location when generating the results. This means that when a user wants to find something specific on Google, it will be easier than on Bing as Google will have a clear picture of the user before they type anything into the browser.

Google has always been a link-based search engine, where quality comes above quantity, whereas this is not as important to Bing, which will affect the user’s experience when they search, as they could potentially be looking a low-quality content.

 

Importing Campaigns:

Bing offers a feature that Google does not, where you can import your campaigns from Google Ads, Facebook and a file. This means that you can be more efficient when creating campaigns on both Google and Bing, as you can just import the campaigns to Bing.

This is a fantastic feature that Bing offers, however with the new performance max campaign that Google has introduced, is not available on Bing yet, which means that only search and shopping campaigns can be served on that search engine.

 

Cost:

Generally, there is less competition in terms of paid marketing, due to the majority of businesses using the Google search engine and don’t even consider Bing in their PPC strategy. This means that the average CPC, as well as the overall cost, is much less which makes Bing a more cost-effective marketing tool.

 

Videos:

To get your videos indexed by both Google and Bing, you need the following:

 

• A video title
• Video description
• The URL of where the video is embedded
• The publication date
• A link to the image file
• The duration of the video

 

Despite the information needed being the same, both search engines use the data provided in a different way. Google ranks the Videos in the SERPs, however Bings videos are presented in a grid layout without an obvious strategy.

Bing gives the user watching the video, the option to watch the video within Bings search engine, or to go to the other site where the video is located. This option gives Bing the chance to keep most of its traffic within its own system rather than diverting the traffic to its biggest competitors, such as Google.

Bing also offers an ad-free experience that Google doesn’t offer, unlike YouTube.

 

So, Which Platform Is The Best For You?

Both platforms are great at what they do, they offer thousands of opportunities and information for the user. Bing has definitely improved in the last year and is becoming more of a competitor, especially with the unique features that they offer.

If you can, we suggest that you use both, with a low budget on Bing to start with so that you can start seeing the results that you want, you can import your campaigns from Google over to Bing allowing both campaigns to perform on both campaigns to see which does better and where.

 

If you need some more information about Bing or Google, contact our team today for more guidance and information.