Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes online knows they will need a search engine to find something on the internet. There are a lot of different ways that you can go about this. Today, I am going to focus on the two leading search engines – Google and Bing. Of all the search engines, these two platforms receive the most traffic on any given day. Therefore, if you are looking to see how well you are doing on the internet, you will want to make sure you are highly ranked on both of them. When I am working on a person’s online reputation, I do tend to go with Google. However, the other major search engines are just as valid as the next. Let’s look at how Google and Bing stack up against each other and benefit by monitoring them separately.
Demographics
I am going to start off by looking at Bing. Bing attracts an older and wealthier user. Additionally, the majority of their searches come from the United States. If you are looking to advertise, it would be recommended that you use this platform. It is a little bit cheaper to advertise on Bing versus Google. However, it would be best if you considered that you would be using a platform that garners approximately six million searches a month. It will be a decision that you have to make. Are you willing to deal with less traffic, or do you want to pay less to advertise?
Of all the search engines available, 80% of users make Google their first stop. Google is so famous it has even achieved product name status. This means that like Kleenex (actually called a facial tissue), people use the brand name to indicate what they want. So, instead of saying, “search for,” they say, “Google.” The demographic of Google users tend to be a younger generation that is tech-savvy. The reason for this is that you can input multiple search string caveats. For example, if you are looking for coffee, you can type in the search string, “coffee -Folgers.” This will return all coffee brands except for Folgers. There are a number of other lines like that you can type in to narrow down your search. That is not something you can do with Bing as quickly.
Features
Speaking of features, if you are looking for videos, Bing just does it better. That is not to say that Google cannot return videos for you; they even have a select tab just for videos. However, Bing tends to put the relevant videos directly in their search results. Users that are not well versed on the internet find this to be much more comfortable. The downfall is that if you are trying to rank on Bing, you will have to contend with these results as well.
When you conduct a search, if there are images to go along with that search, Google will place them at the bottom of the page. Bing, conversely, sticks them to the side of the search. I am not saying either is better than the other; it is just a different layout that you may need to get used to.
Finally, the layout of the search engine results page (SERP) is wildly different. While Google attempts to get you more results with less scrolling, Bing gives you larger icons. This might be another reason that the aging population tends to enjoy Bing more. We all know the older we get, the more our vision fades. Bing knows its target audience and has produced an SERP that is tailored to them.
SERP and SEO Differences
If you are looking for something other than a web page, you will have to go with Google. They simply do it better than Bing. Yes, you are looking for web pages, but they have a vast assortment of tabs at the top of the SERP that can give you results for things like images, videos, etc.
When it comes to answering questions directly, Google wins hands down. I know many people that will type a query into the Google search bar, and they get an answer within seconds. The reason is that Google has perfected the longtail search strings. Their algorithms can understand what people are looking for.
When it comes to content, you are going to see two varied results. Bing tends to want content that is old and reliable. Google is looking for fresh, new content. Don’t think that Google is not in favor of authentic content; they just want it to be unique. Things are always changing. As far as Google is concerned, they want to be on the cutting edge of that change. Bing will eventually get around to it, but it has to come from an old page that has been around since the 1990s.
Social Media
We all know that social media is a significant part of today’s society. Of the two search engines we are discussing today; Bing does it better. They know how much people rely on social media to get their news. Therefore, they make these critical social signals into account for their rankings. Google, on the other hand, sees no difference between them and any other indexed page.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which engine I think is better. The decision is mainly up to personal preference. I will tell you, though, when you are looking to increase your online reputation, you need to take both of them very seriously. Between the two engines, you are looking at the possibility of reaching better than 85% of internet users. You can tailor your website to rank high on either one or both. All it takes is a little attention to detail, and making sure the content you are placing on your website is something that both engines will recognize. That means you will need to do a mix of fresh content along with videos and images. It should be more than sufficient to get you ranked and recognized.