Google vs Bing: We Compare The Two Big Search Engines

Whenever a person asks a question they are not sure about to a room of people, you can almost 99% of the time be guaranteed to hear the response, “I don’t know, Google it”.

Whilst Googling something you might not know may be the most effective way to learn the actual answer, why is Google the go-to response, why don’t people respond with “ Bing it”, and what is the difference between the 2? What should I know as a PPC agency in London about the two?

Google and Bing are the top contenders for search engines and have forever changed the way we gather information. However, while doing the same job, you will get a vastly different response if you type the exact phrase into both engines.

So why is Google the world’s most popular search engine, and how does Bing measure up? Why do you get such different responses to the same phrase?

Technical SEO

The technical factors and domain authority remain the same for SEO, but Google and Bing emphasise different aspects.

Google is working hard to improve search accuracy by listening and learning from the users intent and interpreting contextual cues from different websites, known as “semantic search”. Semantic search, in part, relies on machine learning and artificial intelligence (such as RankBrain) to help them understand a page’s content. 

However, suppose you are looking to increase your rankings on SERPs. In that case, Bing will focus on keywords that exactly match the terms you’re targeting, instead of topical relevance like with Google. 

In both cases, it’s important to ensure that your landing pages contain the keywords that you want to target with your PPC campaigns, for increased relevance and a higher likelihood of being shown against competitive keywords in SERPs.

Meta Keywords

As mentioned before, Bing relies more heavily on conventional SEO methods when crawling through content such as keywords in the domain, page titles, and metadata. 

Google, however, pays little attention to this and will focus more on topical relevance. All in all, this makes it more difficult for SEOs to optimise for Google than Bing, so when producing content for Google, it is essential more than ever to ensure that you are creating comprehensive, high-quality content.

Backlinks

Both Google and Bing still use backlinks to improve domain authority; however, the more links to your site, the better its authority (and the better it will stand out in the search results). However, unlike Google, Bing does not place quite as much importance on backlinks. 

Google will focus on High-PageRank links as they are weighted heavily. For Google, high-quality and authoritative backlinks are worth more than low-PageRank links from spammy or toxic sites.

Bing, however, is still based on domain age and specific domain extensions. From Bing’s perspective, if you earn lots of organic backlinks with well-established domains, you will rank higher, especially if those domains end with .gov, .edu, and .org extensions.

Social Signals

When asked, Google has categorically denied that they participate in using social signals in its ranking algorithms (e.g. consumer-brand interaction on Facebook). They rank Facebook and Twitter as any other indexed pages.

On the other hand, Bing actively uses social signals as a ranking factor and an added incentive for engaging social media presence. By now, most companies should have a plan of action for social media, but with Bin pages that have earned a more significant number of likes, shares, and retweets, they are more likely to rank highly on Bing. 

The Cost

While Google ads are the top contender, you shouldn’t rule Bing ads out, especially if you are on a tight budget.

Bing ads have significantly lower costs per click than Google. Bing Ads are cheaper, with the average CPC being up to 70% lower and can reach 63 million searchers that Google Ads doesn’t. This ultimately presents businesses the opportunity to not only save money but be able to get new customers too.

As well as cost, Bing’s average user tends to be older and seem to earn a high salary of £70,000 a year or more, and Ads have a higher CTR on Bing than Facebook, indicating that users are hunting for a solution to their needs. 

So as a B2B business, it’s worth not neglecting Bing due to the more qualified leads and Bing’s demographic being in a stronger position to purchase. 

Ultimately whilst simply ”Googling it “ is an effective way of gaining information, from a marketing standpoint, it’s important to note that yes, google is the most popular search engine and choice for your marketing strategy you need to consider Bing. 

Depending on your client, factors such as social presence, type of company, and budget play a significant part in what channel you might choose.

You may find that Bing is more superior in not only yielding results but increasing SERP’s, lowering costs, and reaching your ideal customers. 

If you are still interested in which platform is best suited for your business, don’t be afraid to reach out to us at the Good Marketer, we’d be happy to help. 

Get in touch with our team today to see how, as an expert PPC agency in London, in-house specialists can help propel your business.