Do You "Bing"?
Google has long been the King of online search. When you need an answer to a question, information about a product, or the latest sports score updates, chances are good you simply “Google” them.
Or do you?
Recent stats posted on SearchEngineLand.com show that more and more consumers are “Binging” when searching online. So what’s this Bing you ask? Bing is the reinvented version of Microsoft’s search engine, formerly known as Live Search. Launched in early 2009, Bing is slowing beginning to chip away at Google’s monopoly on search. For the past three months, Bing has been gaining on Google posting a 9.37% share of the search market.
Why This Affects Your Small Business
If you’re like most search engine optimizers chances are you’ve built your site based on what you think will rank well in Google’s search results. But what about Bing users – are your optimizing efforts helping bring new customers in via their search interface? If you’re posting unique content to your site (which you should be) and working on securing backlinks (which I know you are), then you should be ok. SEO for the two engines is pretty similar; however, there are some factors that make a difference.
SEO Differences Between Google and Bing
A while back, SeoWizz.net and Inchoo.net analyzed the way that Google and Bing indexed their search results. Here’s a quick overview of what they found:
- Google puts a lot of weight onto backlinks, Bing… not so much. Bing focuses more on the diversity of your links and not just on the sheer number that you have pointing to your website.
- Bing likes to hunt out cougar sites. The older your domain, the better chances you have for ranking higher in Bing results.
- Link titles are a major consideration in Bing results. Remember to have your link partners use keyword terms in link title tags.
- Pay attention to your page title tags – Bing assigns more importance to this portion of your website than Google does.
Submit Your Site to Bing
The Bing web crawler, like the Google spider, will generally find and index your domain on its own. But, if you want to make sure that engine has found your website, check out Bing’s Webmaster Center submission page. Simply submit your URL and your site will receive a visit from the Bing crawler in a relatively timely manner (this could be two days, or two weeks – it’s impossible to tell). Small business owners can check to see if Bing is indexing their website by performing a site search on the engine. This is done by typing “site:” and your website address in the Bing search bar.
Learn More About Bing
The David and Goliath battle between Bing and Google is beginning to pick up speed. Now is definitely the time to start working on your optimizing strategy for both engines. To learn more about Bing and how the search engine works visit the official Bing Webmaster Center. If you have a Windows Live account you’ll be able to log into the site and view useful data related to your website.
CIK Marketing can help optimize your website for all of the major search engines. Visit out Search Engine Optimization Service page to learn more.
Do you Bing? Leave a comment and let me know!
3 thoughts on “Do You "Bing"?”
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Thanks for this Chantielle – this is helpful for people like me who spend little time with cyber details. Congrats on your upcoming wedding!
Great tips, Chantielle. I think that all web publishers should educate themselves on Bing and all the other search engines apart from Google. Cos Google is not the only search engine, even though it’s ruling now, you shouldn’t only depend one thing, you should put your eggs in many baskets and not only one
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Thanks, great tips
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Best business practice suspends on the belief that “competition provides growth incentives and prosperity”. Then we’ve got social networking from within the system so its no wonder that appearances can sometimes be misleading. Nevertheless I really dig the way you’ve encouraged my participation and perhaps re-interest in search engine land and oh so clever seo science approach!
And oh yes yes yes for point 4 cool cool cool!