Bing is a very underrated search engine, and it’s worth paying attention to.
Google holds 90% of all search traffic,[1] but that doesn’t mean as much as it used to. A survey[2] of Google’s brand recognition found the positive word most associated with it is “best” while the most common negative word used to describe it is “evil.”
That’s a pretty broad range of sentiment, and if you were to only focus on Google, you’ll quickly find it’s difficult to swim upstream in SERPs when you’re the small fish in a big pond.
To illustrate this, let’s search Google for “Who is Spider-Man?”
The front page of this search on my mobile device shows a LOT of information, and none of it is a search result. Instead, it’s all the information aggregated from Google’s knowledge graph. In fact, you have to scroll down before you see the first organic search result.
I love that his phone number and weakness are considered important information. Clearly more villains than heroes are searching for spidey online. And scrolling past the official homepage, there are even more suggested searches from the knowledge graph.
While Google holds 90% of searches, only 6%of them ever leave page 1. And in this instance, page one of Google only has 2 possible organic search results. It is more economically viable for you to get ranked anywhere else except Google.
Avoid these black hat SEO and PR tactics.
Google generates over $100 billion a year[3] in search advertising, while Microsoft generates only $8 billion from Bing.[4]
If you’re the CEO of these companies, that means you’d rather own Google, but if you’re running a website, it means Bing is the cheaper option to pick up traffic. And that traffic is meaningful, because Bing powers many of Google’s competitors, like Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo, and Search.com. Basically anybody not using Google is very likely using Bing.
And that Bing traffic converts very well, if you understand the audience you’re reaching.
For example, I recently published an article about Fox News that blew up on Bing this week. I got a flood of traffic because older generations who still use Yahoo, AOL, and MSN also watch Fox News. It’s my highest trafficked blog of the year and briefly ended up on the front page of MSN, thanks entirely to Bing. The conversion rate and engagement from the non-Google traffic is much higher than what I get from Google or even social media.
That’s why it always makes me smile when someone thinks Google is the only search engine. Bing has a lot more reach than you would think.
Footnotes
[1] Search Engine Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats
[2] Signs.com – Reimagined Brand Logos