Bing is the main competing search engine for Google, at least in countries outside of Asia. With an estimated global search share of 3-5%, it is associated with services from Apple, Facebook and Firefox Mozilla. Website owners should also consider Bing when optimizing their websites, as well as track referrals from this search engine.
Bing is a search engine developed by Microsoft. While there is always a tendency to mention Google when we talk about search engines, we should not forget that there are also other players in the same industry. While worldwide, an estimated 80-90% of searches are being conducted using Google, Bing is another popular search engine, and in some markets it has grown considerably.
Globally, its share of searches is somewhere around 3-5%. Bing also powers Yahoo! Search, which accounts for an additional 2-3% of searches. Website owners should also consider Bing when optimizing their websites. Bing provides features such as sports scores, stock news, flight tracking, unit conversions, product shopping, translation, and many others. It also offers local info such as current traffic, business listings, localized search for restaurants and services, reviews, movies schedules, etc.
The importance of Bing is not to be underestimated. It is a search engine with increasing popularity in some areas of the world and, in some ways, it is a pioneer in the implementation of certain features, such as “bing predicts”.
While it has sometimes been criticized for being slow to index some websites, it could strengthen its position in the search engine landscape in the future. Bing currently has deals with Facebook, Apple, Firefox Mozilla and others, in order to make it the default search engine in some of their app versions. This is why certain users are likely to end up on Bing through one of these partners. Sometimes they may not even notice it. Website owners should be interested in following referrals from Bing and compare their activity to other sources of traffic.