Google vs. Bing: Pros & Cons of The Two Search Engines

Google is the most used search engines in the world. It has been in existence for almost twenty years now. It is improving every year in terms of smart results and advanced features.

Bing is the newest name for Microsoft’s search engine. It was previously known as Windows live search and MSN search.

These two search engines can’t be treated the same because they have some differences. Comparing Bing vs. Google will help you come up with SEO strategy that will optimize for both.

It is important to consider using all search engines or one of them when you are designing SEO strategy.

Many people opt for Bing and Google and abandoning others. Google is the most used search engine in the world today.

However, Bing is also competing against Google in the search market, in fact, it covers almost 24 percent of the search market.

Bing has an alliance with Yahoo in which Bing is the one powering the majority of Yahoo search. Bing and Google own the majority shares in the search market.

Differences between the two search engines

Unique to Google

Mobile Emphasis

Google has begun to rank mobile websites ahead of Bing. It is a unique thing because in other search engines Bing included, mobile use is the priority.

Older Pages Vs. Fresh Content

In Bing, old and reputable pages are favored while Google tends to prefer regularly engaged and fresh content.

Internal Page Ranking

Google ranks internal pages like blogs and services whereas Bing does ranking to the home page.

Automatic Campaign Tagging In Google Analytics

Many actions in Google are automated. One of these automated actions includes campaign tagging. Paid search campaigns are being tracked automatically.

Unique to Bing

Hidden Content Is Crawled Equally

Bing can’t differentiate between the hidden and non-hidden content. Google, on the other hand, can differentiate them and as a result, may devalue the content. Hidden contents might cause damage to visibility and ranking in Google.

Exact-Match Keywords

Bing pays attention to exact-match keywords, in a place where specific words are shown in the Metadata and the text on the page.

Google on the other side is only paying attention to concepts and focal points over exact-match keywords.

Social Signals

Bing highly value social signals than Google. Google is claiming that social signals have less value on their search engine.

Flash Content

Bing favors sites that have engaging flash and it can read them well whereas Google can’t read sites that have engaging flash content.

Similarities between Bing and Google

Big Brands Rank Higher

Big brands will automatically rank higher across all search engines. Higher ranking of the big brands is as a result of daily visitors to the site, domain authority and backlinks that are of high quality.

High-Quality Backlinks

Both Bing and Google search engines highly value backlinks. The credibility of your site will be raised if other sites are linking to your site.

Search engines give much emphasis on the quality. High-quality backlinks are valued much by the search engines be it Bing or Google.

Local Search

Both Bing and Google value local search. Therefore developing a locally targeted SEO is going to be valuable on the search engine.

Seo Tools

All search engines have webmaster tools in which important search information can be accessed from.

How to Optimize for Search on Google and Bing

Have learned some similarities and differences between Bing and Google search engines, it is, therefore, important to learn some optimization techniques that will help in yielding high benefits and minimize deduction across both search engines.

These techniques include;

1. Title Tags

Bing will require title tags to feature keywords if they are to perform well. However, Google will require a wise use of keywords in order to prevent keyword stuffing.

2. Optimize Homepage and Top Internal Pages

The homepage should be optimized because Bing will rank the home page. It is therefore nice to have optimized content that is valuable to the user.

Internal pages like services should also be optimized because Google is likely to rank them.

3. Social Media

Both the two search engines would prefer social media, but Bing would prefer social media than Google. For the search engines to rank the pages, they would have to use social media.

4. Local SEO

Strong SEO strategy should be implemented because both Bing and Google value the local services.

5. Mobile Optimization

Mobile sites are valued by both Bing and Google. It is therefore very important to optimize the site for mobile use.

6. Get Rid of Flash

It is nice to convert from flash to HTML; this because some search engines like Google does not read flash websites well.

Although Bing might still be able to read flash websites, it is important to get rid of it, this because losing ranking on Google is much painful than losing ranking on Bing.

Basic Layout and Search Engines Features

The following are the difference in the basic layout and search features between Bing and Google:

a) Bing has a better video search than Google’s video search. This is the only biggest difference between Bing and Google.
b) Shopping suggestions in Google show up more often as compared to Bing’s shopping suggestions. Google is better than Bing in providing the best price online.
c) Bing provides more autocomplete suggestions than what Google provides in most cases.
d) Google puts related searches and image searches near the bottom while Bing puts them to the right of your search results.
e) Image search interface for Google feels a bit smoother when using it while bit’s image search interface feels kind of cool.

Bing has been adopting many smart searches for Google such as unit conversions, information about popular people, movie showtimes, and local weather.

However, Google still has some features that Bing doesn’t have. These features include; movies and video games release date and health information.

Google is more effective for people relying on smart searches. Bing, on the other hand, has a nice feature that predicts whether ticket prices will go up or down.

Google Works

It comprises of two advertising networks:

The search network- text adverts are created to appear in the search engine results.

The display network- display adverts are created to appear on a number of websites across the internet.

Bing Ads

Bing has three search engines; that is, Bing, Yahoo, and AOL. Your advert will be seen on all the three platforms if you advertise it on one platform.

This will open up campaigns to searchers across all three platform and partner sites.

Bing ads vs. Google Works

Google works and Bing ads differ in terms of basic aspects like display URLs, description text, keywords, and click-through rate.

Display URL

Both the two search engines show display URLs underneath the ad headline

Description Text

Both Bing ads and Google works allow 80 characters in one longer description field.

Keywords

Both Bing and Google provides a keyword search tool.

Click-through Rate

Bing ads have higher CTR as compared to Google at work.

Conclusion

You can optimize your site to perform well on search engines if you have a better understanding of Bing vs. Google.