Google Vs. Bing. How Do Search Engines Work?
While Google owns a lion’s share of the search engine market it’s obviously not the only one used by people around the world. To improve your SEO strategy it’s worth taking a closer look at the differences between particular search engines and defining the potential that lies within. In this entry, we’re comparing Google and Bing search engines – keep reading!
In the battle of the search engines, we hear a lot of conversations around Google Vs. Bing. As SEOs and digital marketers, we want to ensure the content we create is engaging, effective, and unique, and helps our search engine ranking across the board – no matter which search platform we use.
Just remember, whatever the differences – even the pros and cons of each – both Google and Bing rewards high quality, relevant, useful, and evergreen content, so this should always be the objective. However, there are some lesser-known technical points which varies between each system, meaning your website stats could be quite different between the two.
Even if you more frequently hear the question, how does Google work? For the age-old Google vs Bing debate, we will share some insights into each of their unique processes, so you’ll be on the way to future-proofing your website for any search engine ranking you come across, and gaining the most rewards.
Understand the Players
Firstly, to understand the question of how do search engines work, let’s look at the players in this example. Everyone knows that Google is the world’s biggest search engine, taking into account the searches performed through YouTube, Google Maps, Google Images, and their other websites. It’s worth keeping an eye on Google’s changing algorithm so you can adapt your process and content accordingly.
However, on the other side of the coin, Bing holds a small but respectable market share and there are loyal Bing users who continue searching exclusively on this platform, so you don’t want to be missing out on potential customers.
If you are looking to rank highly for either of these search engines, it’s worth understanding how their individual algorithms work, the key differences, and how you can tailor your own content to perform better for not only one, but across both.
Battle of the Bots
From a functioning standpoint, the way bots work is a little different across each search engine. Google’s spider bots comprehensively crawl through every piece of content and every page on your website, before it’s even defined by search engine ranking. This means you can include relevant keywords or content scattered throughout your many subpages, and it will all be found.
However, the Bing bots do not index every single web page and usually, only the homepage will make it onto the first-page search results. Bing will also typically crawl through the first 100kb of a page and then award a rank based on these findings. What does this mean? To be optimized for both, try to prioritize some good, optimized content near the start of your homepage, in order to rank well with Bing (as well as Google) and have your website tracking reflect this.
Titles vs. Keywords?
It’s a slight generalization, but some web marketers have commented that Bing focuses more on anchor text and title tags such as H1 and H2 for mining optimized content. Whereas Google identifies word patterns and phrases, i.e. it’s more content-focused, and display search results based on relationships between matching keywords. Google will also look for synonyms; to find similar, helpful results based on other searches a user has made.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s not to overlook proper website tags which could rank favorably with Bing but may appear less useful to Google. Simply put, ensure you’re leaving no stone unturned in your optimization efforts. How do search engines work? Spend time fully optimizing your content and you’ll soon see the difference.
Dated Content
We already know that Google’s algorithm is regularly updated and therefore changes, but the system is powerful and won’t neglect your freshest content, all based on your website’s general relevancy, domain authority, and so on. So, once you add new pages, services, or content to your website, assuming your website has a good “relationship” going with Google, your search engine ranking should update fairly quickly.
In contrast, Bing reportedly refreshes results every three months and, interestingly, it sees content that has been live for a few months or more as extra authoritative, therefore ranking higher. Importantly, it could take three months or more before a new website emerges on Bing’s first results page. The lesson? Plan ahead when launching new content if you can, even if it means publishing a holding page, or you may need to wait a while before seeing website tracking and traffic through Bing.
Backlinks Improve SEO
Any external links are hugely important to improve SEO. Don’t forget, Google actively evaluates the quality and quantity of your backlinks. The more authoritative the source link is, the better your ranking will be on Google. So, it’s worth investing time in new backlinks to build trust and authority.
With Bing, they focus more on backlink quality (rather than quantity) even rewarding internal backlinks with quality anchor text and social media links. “Quality over quantity” should always be on the cards (though quantity is not a bad thing), just remember that Bing will reward you more for fewer, “better” backlinks.
Don’t overlook social media to improve SEO. As well as keeping in contact with your customers, Bing has demonstrated that social media feeds into their backlink algorithm too, showing the value in posting relevant content, especially for highly targeted, keyword-driven social platforms such as Pinterest.
Visuals Boost Website Analytics
Some believe that multimedia is more important in Bing’s search engine ranking than Google’s. This is perhaps because Bing ranks websites and pages that use pictures, video, and audio much higher than websites that don’t.
In comparison, while Google’s bots certainly sweep for content, you may need to be extra diligent in making sure your content is optimized correctly, with relevant alt tags and keywords rather than uploading unnamed videos and images. This should be a no-brainer, but when you go to the effort of sourcing and potentially creating content, make sure it’s customized so that the search engines can find and categorize it correctly.
What’s more, good video and images support SEO for mobile and can form part of your strategy to get better mobile traffic. When you understand how do search engines work, you won’t want to hold back on offering good content ever again.
Google Vs. Bing – Only Website Stats Matter
When it comes down to it, web tracking and proven results are all that really matter. These are just some of the basic ways Google and Bing reward the websites they crawl. If you can become savvy across both, and any search engine for that matter, your traffic will grow and your website analytics will reflect your success. It’s a win-win.
Just remember, every single search engine rewards quality, relevant, and useful content. This is your secret weapon, but how you deploy it is up to you.
If you want to improve general website SEO, an SEO for a mobile plan, or simply believe your website analytics is a concern, there could be many reasons explaining why your website doesn’t generate traffic.
If you’d like to discuss how we at Delante can help you gain even more relevant traffic and reach new customers, please get in touch for a consultation.
