Microsoft’s search engine Bing, has achieved what until now no one imagined could happen: put Google against the ropes. The spectacular irruption of its chatbot, ChatGPT, has made Alphabet miss the opportunity to be the first to implement artificial intelligence in its search engine. Now, at a forced march, they have had to follow in their footsteps and present a chat prototype, which they have called Bard, to prevent the loss of users and their value on the stock market. But it has not turned out as well as expected. In this article I explain why it is important that you take Bing into account in your positioning strategy and why it is gaining ground on Google.
And it is that Bing is one of the most used search engines in the world., which has made it the second most consulted after the king of internet searches. This can mean a new SEO opportunity for your project and not limit your potential clients to a single search engine, since through Bing you can capture different traffic from the one you receive from Google.
As you might have guessed, Bing also uses its own algorithm to index and rank the web pages displayed on its results pages. But its most attractive strength is that it has now taken the lead and is the one that is dictating the steps that search engines must follow to update, because it has connected ChatGPT to the browser and the Edge browser. The answers have not been long in coming, since it is not just about Google. China’s own Baidu has already announced that it will shortly present its counterpart technology.
Bing and Artificial Intelligence: This is how they have made Google nervous
Artificial intelligence integrated into the search engine
There is a strong reason to predict that, in the coming months, Bing could make Google very restless. The emergence of ChatGPT has not only made Google nervous (and buggy) Bard, its AI chat, but now Microsoft has also integrated conversational artificial intelligence into its browser. And it is that, in this situation, it is Google who has the most to lose and Bing much more to gain. In fact, although this new Bing was already available for PC users, now Microsoft has also enabled it for mobile, which will make people want to try it and download it from its app store. We’ll see if the statistics surprise us soon.
But this is not all, since they have also integrated the chatbot in Skype, so that it is one more contact that can help you in your conversations.
Of course, Microsoft is putting all its effort into differentiating itself from Google through artificial intelligence, which at the moment is its best asset to achieve this.
The main difference between the two is that Google is testing it in beta, with access to very few test users, while Microsoft has already had to run a waiting list due to high user demand. This is very representative of the digital “war” that has begun between the two large multinationals.
Microsoft goes all-in with ChatGPT
This new way of making queries can mean a before and after in the way we use search engines up to now. This is the reason why Google has ventured to measure its forces against the company of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and for this it is using as many resources as necessary. For example, it has a team of former OpenAI researchers, which they have named Anthropic, and it also studies linguistic models such as ChatGPT.
Just as Microsoft is implementing ChatGPT in all its products, such as Bing, Edge or Skype, Google announced that its artificial intelligence will also improve other of its most used products, such as Maps or the translator. For the first time, it seems that the quintessential browser has been overtaken and Alphabet is working at full speed to reverse the situation.
AI Effects on Bing
So it is logical to think that the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence in Bing has caused certain relevant havoc:
- Google has emerged a strong competitor to give it a fight.
- Now, the browser has to innovate and reinvent a model that, despite its updates, is still based on searching by words and obtaining a list of URLs.
- It has caused nervousness that has even resulted in loss of shares and, therefore, millions of dollars for the company.
- It will affect your Ads model, which until now has exploded and been acclaimed by digital companies, but which can be heavy and bland for consumers. I imagine how the simple fact of being able to access a paid ChatGPT can change, in which users can skip the constant and intrusive advertising.
One last piece of information, did you know that ChatGPT, in just two months, has achieved a whopping 100 million users? According to Reuters, it is the fastest growing online app on the internet.
More visual searches
If Bing also differs from Google for something, it is because the results of user searches are more visual and it acts as an excellent image search engine. In addition, it allows visual search with an image instead of text, to find, as Microsoft Bing itself says, “images, products and similar pages that include an image.”
Although Google is now beginning to value the presence in social networks, especially for the EAT that affects its positioning, Bing has always taken them more into account. Make sure you have an active social media presence relevant to your niche and share valuable and relevant content for your followers. To understand if a page is popular among its users, Bing uses the number of shares on social networks, and if so, it sends positive signals so that social influence can favor an increase in organic traffic.
How Bing and Google SEO differ
The purpose of an SEO strategy in Bing is like in any other search engine: what you want is to improve the visibility of your website in the results, so that in turn it increases the traffic of the page and, finally, generate leads or sales. Therefore, the objective is not too different from the approach that we carry out in Google, but it is important to take into account that although the public is smaller, it is an interesting niche that I advise you to know and that you can exploit with the necessary knowledge.
Now I am going to comment on some particularities to do SEO in Bing:
Searches on Yahoo! they also count
Thanks to an alliance between the technology company and Yahoo!, the latter is part of Bing’s search. This means that it is based on the Bing index and ranking guidelines. Therefore, we can affirm that optimizing SEO for one search engine implies doing it for the other as well.
Bing is more transparent about its ranking factors
It is much more open about its ranking factors compared to Google. You just have to take a look at the guidelines guide, public and free for anyone who wants to consult it, and their tools for webmasters. This is the equivalent of Google’s Search Console and it clearly specifies which are the parameters to which Microsoft gives priority over others to position some content and not others, as well as the possibility of accessing reports of backlinks or keywords and even a breakdown of your site’s SEO errors. In fact, it is much more generous with SEO practices than Google, since it even recommends creating “a plan on how to generate internal and external links” and considers that optimizing anchor text can favor us. Something that Google would never say and would even consider malpractice.
That is why we are not surprised that one of its key factors to position is that there is an exact match of the anchor texts.
But not only for the anchor text, but also recognizes that it will be easier to position if there is an exact match of the domain with respect to the search terms or in the H1 and H2 tags. Of course, as in Google, do not fall for Keyword Stuffing.
And how are Bing and Google alike?
Yes, some of the Google factors are also important for Bing. For example:
A good link building strategy is very important
Because if your link profile on Bing contains quality do-follow links, what those backlinks will be doing is telling Bing that the sites that point to your content trust your website. Similar to Google, the most trusted organic links for Bing are from relevant and trustworthy websites like .edu, -org, or .gob. In addition, links from old domains are just as necessary, since longevity on the Internet is considered a sign of trust. And, of course, you should perform a backlink audit to avoid those that the search engine identifies as abusive or those that you do not want pointing to your site. Try to remove them by requesting it to the webmaster or disavow them by disavow.
Something similar to what happens with the EAT in Google
In Bing there are three concepts around which a good organic positioning revolves: authority, usefulness and presentation of the contents.
- Authority: You will have to answer yourself if your content can be trusted. To demonstrate this, you can clearly mention the author and indicate the sources of the information you have used.
- Utility. Ask yourself: is the content useful and detailed enough? If you are able to resolve user queries and ensure that you help them, Bing will detect that your site should appear above others in the results.
- Presentation. Just as important is to question whether the content is well presented or easy to find. Work with formatted and well-structured content, and don’t forget to clearly distinguish an ad from a piece of content.
- Finally, as with Google My Business, in the Microsoft search engine you will find Bing Places, where you can indicate that you are the owner of a company and provide information such as location, opening hours or profiles on social networks.
And finally
Do not underestimate the potential of Bing because the United States, for example, is the country that uses this search engine the most, exceeding 30% of the market share. Can you imagine what would happen if your business is focused on the public of this territory? Positioning on Bing would help you gain visibility for 3 out of 10 search engine users. Also, by being more permissive with optimization or having less competition within the search engine itself, it can be useful to find great opportunities for your business within your sector.
In short, if you ignore Bing in search engine optimization SEO you can fall into a surefire way to lose potential traffic and risk wasting an important audience.
Javier Gazquez Extroverted, cheerful, creative and inveterate in the internet world. Twelve years ago I founded Interamplify, an international positioning agency of which I am the current CEO. Expert in link building and SEO and content strategies with an entrepreneurial vision that allows me to detect business options globally.
