Bing vs Google

What is the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the word ‘search’? Google! Yes, this has been the case for years, maintaining its rightful top position as a powerful search engine. But is this still the situation? When Bing was introduced to the market, everyone judged its creator without giving a second thought. But, has Bing succeeded to be a serious competition to its counterpart?

Well, we’ve done our research on both, digging deep into their features. Read on and discover who is KING!

How to judge which is the better search engine?

About Google

Without a doubt, Google is the most-widely used search engine in the world, dominating more than 90% of the search engine market share. But, do you know how did this versatile search engine start? At first, Google was named BackRub and started as a university search project by Larry Page, Scott Hassan, and Sergey Brin. Its initial service was backlinks to determine site relevance for organic search. Scott Hassan left the company before it went public and in 1997, The Google.com domain was registered. Now, Google offers more than 50 internet services, always making improvements to aid its boom.

About Bing

In 1998, Bing started as MSN Search, encompassing search engine, web crawler, and index. A year later, MSN Search went through a rebranding phase and transformed into Windows Live Search. It comprised the tabs; Web, images, news, music, desktop, and more. In 2007, Microsoft rebranded it again as Live Search and merged with Microsoft adCenter, which became Bing Ads, and later, Microsoft Ads. In 2009, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer rebranded it again and settled for Bing. In 2020, Bing’s name was changed once more to Microsoft Bing. Now, Bing holds more than 5% of the global search market, surpassing Yahoo and DuckDuckGo.

Market Share & Different Features

Basically, there is no difference between Bing and Google, regarding search by text, video, image, and maps. Both have News Feed and a shopping feature. Regarding market share, Google dominates about 91.75% of the world’s search share, while Bing sees around 2.75%. Other search engines come next like Yahoo (1.46%) and DuckDuckGo (0.66%).

Comparison between Bing & Google

Search Algorithms

When comparing the Search Algorithms of both Google and Bing, Google is highly secretive and never reveals its procedure. Google doesn’t depend on one algorithm, but multiple ones that consider many factors, including:

• Keywords of the query

• Location

• Query relevance

• The freshness of the content

• How trusted the sources are

On the other hand, Bing is more open about its algorithms, adding its Space Partition Tree and Graph algorithm to GitHub in 2019.

The algorithms of Bing include:

• Vector search

• Bing relies on keywords in the domain, metadata & page titles more than Google

• Click signals

• Older websites have more authority compared to newer websites

• Bing doesn’t care much about content quantity

• Bing trusts websites with powerful backlinks

• Online forums & moderation quality

• Bing relies on social signals as a ranking factor such as consumer interaction with a brand on social media

In relation to local search, Google focuses on listings of much closer proximity while Bing tends to have a wider radius. Actually, more than 46% of users seek Google’s search engine to look for local information.

Search Engine Result Pages

Both platforms have similar search engine result pages, with the same navigation bar and style. The search process itself, along with the results are usually the same too. Just enter keywords relevant to the product or service that you’re searching for. However, there is only one difference; Bing has a more representable search engine than Google. Bing offers a qualitative grid with large thumbnails, where you can click to get a preview of the video without leaving Bing. This is the only point where Bing has gained an advantage over Google, establishing its credibility.

Additional SERP Features

Google has its own SERP features, which were adopted later by Bing. Both search engines have the following features:

• Maps

• News & Top Stories

• Images & Videos

• Sitelinks & Mini-sitelinks

• Featured snippets (table/list/text)

• Related searches

• Jobs

• Shopping

• In-depth articles

• Recipes

• Reviews

• Apps

• Knowledge cards/carousels/panels

• Flights

Google has some features that Bing chose not to have, including Accelerated Mobile Pages SERP for mobile users and “People Also Ask” Boxes. Some opinions suggest that Snippet Features and PPA boxes decrease the CTRs for all the sites on the first page. When Google decided to remove the pages with featured from the organic listings, views have increased especially in e-commerce websites.

Bing Maps vs. Google Maps

Both Google and Bing include precise maps with great functionalities and approximately the same user interfaces (UIs). Both maps are visually the same, with a similar knowledge panel that showcases basic information about businesses. Of course, you can zoom in and out in both maps, with the ability to save and share direction functionalities. So, what is the difference between the two maps? Each map includes different directions, in addition to different estimated times for journeys. Google has longer journey time estimates (about 3-5% of the time estimated by Bing). Also, Google Maps highlight important incidents such as bridge closures, which Bing Maps exclude.

Voice Search

Do you know that 50% of people use Voice Search to find products online? Do you know that there has been a 35-time increase in voice searches since 2008? Do you know that more than 39% of people use a virtual personal assistant?

At this point, Bing took over Google with its voice search frontrunner, dominating 70% of the market share. That’s how Bing started to make it to the spotlight and gain visibility with the absence of Google voice search. However, in 2017, Google launched its Home devices, which compensated for their loss in front of Bing’s voice search. Using Voice Search, you can find your query using long-tail keywords (between 5 to 10 words) unlike the typed search queries (1 to 3 words). In fact, Voice Search is an important opportunity for digital marketers and SEO specialists to optimize their content using relevant keywords.

Smart Speaker VPA

Have you ever heard of Siri? If yes, then you’ve probably used Bing before without even knowing! When speaking about Bing’s significant features, we can’t surpass the smart speaker VPA. There are no proven statistics to compare the number of queries answered by Bing and Google. However, it is assumed that the majority of people use Bing’s service compared to Google’s. That’s because Siri (Apple), Cortana (Microsoft), and Alexa (Amazon) use Bing for VPA service. On the other hand, Google offers only Google Assistant to provide answers to their users. A quick comparison; Microsoft’s Cortana has more accurate speech recognition than Google Assistant. But, Google Assistant offers a greater understanding of linguistic context.

Google Ads vs. Microsoft Advertising

On comparing Google and Bing, there are no many differences regarding the research side. However, there are plenty when looking for the advertising side of each platform. In 2006, Microsoft Advertising started as MSN adCenter, surpassing Google Ads. Overture and Yahoo supplied PPC advertising on MSN Search until Microsoft joined 6 years after launching Google AdWords. At first, Google offered a subscription-based model, where Google set up and handled the campaigns on behalf of the companies. But, in 2005, this process changed after launching AdWords self-service portal, which was transformed later to Google Ads Service.

Differences between Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising  

• Cost Per Click

  CPC differs between the two platforms, with much lower rates for Microsoft Advertising. If your business has a limited budget, Microsoft Advertising will be the most convenient choice. Lower CPC leads to lower Cost Per Conversion. However, it is worthy to mention that these low rates lead to much lower search volume.

• Demographics

  Google has a younger audience with demographics targeting a more technologically savvy audience. Bing is used by an older audience with high education levels.

• Networks

  Using Google, you can advertise on both the Search and Display Network. Using Bing, you can advertise on the Search only. So, if you want to use image or media ads, you can go for Google Ads only.

• Targeting

  As Microsoft owns LinkedIn, Microsoft Advertising allows marketers to target their ads using LinkedIn profile information. Utilising important information such as company, job, industry, and function, Microsoft Advertising offers precise targeting. Of course, this feature isn’t available on Google.

• Reach

  Microsoft owns Bing, AOL, and Yahoo, offering advertising on the three search engines.

Advantages of Google

• Google Search Engine provides more clear and precise results, organising the results according to relevance and importance.

• Google achieves high efficiency in searching, saving time with fast loading even when you’re not sure about the right keywords

• Google owns Google reader and Google +, which provide rich and valuable information

Advantages of Bing

• Bing offers a stronger social integration, with smoother social connectivity than Google.

• The result page of Bing is more attractive than Google’s, with a much neat presentation.

Things that Bing does better than Google

Image Search

Bing offers high-quality images in the search results, with an ‘infinite scroll’ feature so you don’t need to click through the numerous page results. However, Google added the infinite scroll function to cope up with Bing. Besides, Bing has accessible filters and the ability to search for different image layouts (square, tall, and wide). Google has almost the same features provided by Bing, but you have to dig deeper to find them (Not good). One drawback to Bing; it doesn’t offer GIF images on the result page.

Video Search

Yes, Google owns YouTube, but who has the most fascinating video search? Surprise, surprise, the winner here is Bing! Bing offers a superior grid of thumbnails that allow users to watch videos without leaving the search engine results page. Also, you can hover over the video to get a preview.

Free stuff

Bing actually pays you for using Bing’s search engine. Wait, what?! Bing started to win people over with its Microsoft Rewards feature, using a Point System. Every time you search on Bing, it awards you points that can be redeemed for a wide range of outlets, including Amazon and Starbucks. Tempting, right?! Who doesn’t love a bit of legal bribery?!

Who is the Winner?

Google or Bing? Bing or Google? A tough call! While Google is the clear leader in the search engine industry, Bing’s vast growth and competitive features are alarming. We can’t really decide! Google has the upper hand, owning the first-mover’s advantage. Maybe, this is the main reason why it continues to be the preferred search engine for most users. Also, we can’t deny the continuous innovations made by Google to stay on the top. If you’re keen on perfect image and video search (and free stuff), you may need to switch to Bing’s search engine. Still, Google is the MAN in the house! Until Bing makes some improvements, Google will continue to dominate its position.

What do you think? Will Google continue to be in power? Or, will Bing continue to up its game until it becomes in charge? No one knows, but we will keep an eye on both!

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