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Marketing on Search Engines: Google or Bing? Or Both?

Could Bing take over as the preferred “search engine” of choice? And what does that mean for businesses marketing on search engines?

marketing on search engines

I recently came across the article, “Bing As A Platform Will Allow Microsoft To Compete With Google For Developer Cred“, which further sparked my interest into users preferences between Google and Bing.

For many, Google, the giant beast of search engines, has infiltrated every part of peoples – including my own – daily lives and routines. But with Bing’s commercials–which I find very entertaining–, apple recently aligning itself with Microsoft instead of Google for Siri and with Bing advertisers integrated in Windows 8.1 Smart Search,  I find myself wondering which search engine will have the biggest impact on businesses in the next few years.

As the digital landscape continues to grow and rapidly change, more businesses are adapting their focus towards the online market. In order to meet the needs of the consumer – who search for products and seek information out on the web from search engines alike – companies are marketing on search engines. They are using PPC, SEO and other approaches to reach consumers on Google, Bing and Yahoo. And it’s no secret that advertising on a search engine can be extremely costly; especially for businesses looking to target consumers on Google.

For Google’s competitors, drumming up interest in getting a consumers to use their engine is a top priority. Bing continues to market their search engine heavily and even driving the term “Bing it” similar to Google’s “Google it” in order to catch on with users. Coupled with their advertising presence and partnerships, Bing might just become more than a fierce contender against Google. Right?

Don’t get me wrong, Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and is a well-respected brand, but that does not mean it can’t or won’t face competition. In May, comScore released its findings on the top search engines market share, which pointed out Bing’s growth.  Although Google continues to be the dominant search engine, it is businesses who are marketing, advertising, creating content and so forth that need to ask themselves the question: “How can I effectively advertise my content and website without breaking the bank and reaching as many consumers as possible on multiple search engines?”. I’m sure many businesses are already asking themselves this in direct relation to Google, but this question is asking businesses to think about marketing on search engines as a whole.

For most companies, they cannot afford to strictly just do PPC or SEO or Social. They must find balance, which is something we talk about in an upcoming webcast on July 25th, based off a new white paper we created on “5 Steps to Maximize Your Search ROI”.

And although I cannot predict the future or how these two search engines will develop, I can say that as Bing continues to draw attention to itself and increase market share, businesses planning their digital strategies need to arm themselves with the right data and insights to succeed. At the end of the day, it’s how your consumers are finding you. And we as a search and social analytics provider, understand the importance of properly marketing on various search engines – it’s the reason we provide real-time data for 268 search engines/country combinations. They may use Google one minute or Bing the next, and for a company looking to target consumers on all, they must prepare themselves with a solution that can collectively combine all aspects of search engine marketing.

What do you think about marketing on search engines? Should businesses be strategically creating and monitoring SEO/PPC and/or search marketing campaigns around just one, both or multiple search engines?

……and do you “Bing it” or “Google it”?

PS – here’s another video campaign Bing created to compete with Google you might enjoy:

Liv Longley

Liv Longley

46 thoughts on “Marketing on Search Engines: Google or Bing? Or Both?


  • I would say that Google will rule over the Bing for the long time. In case you mean PPC, I would say go for both as it will give you more impressions.

  • Nice work dear. In my thoughts, no body can compete Google because of their reputation. But no one knows what is going to happen next. It is just like competition between android and apple..

  • Hi Liv

    I think Google dominates on desktop and laptops but the number of smartphones that have Bing as the default search engine is growing month on month. There are loads of stats around supporting the increase of users performing searches on mobile devices of desktops.

    With Google heavily focused on driving people to use AdWords instead of natural listings, maybe Bing will dominate within 2 years?

    Thanks Liv. Kev from SixtyMarketing.

  • Glenn D. Bearsky 2013/07/22 at 10:26 pm

    As Google literally strangles an increasing number of websites out of existence and visibility, I find myself using Bing more and more. Bing and Yahoo’s PPC platform is still affordable whereas you need to be an expert statistician to survive Google’s AdWords endless games trying to get any reasonable ROI from trying to advertise with them.

    The whole computing landscape is littered with the deceased bones of tech companies, software, hardware and websites everyone thought were ‘Too Big To Fail’ in their heyday. Now, many are just footnotes in history.

    So too with Google. Sadly, the IM and SEO community seems willing to grant them ‘permanent’ omnipotence and long-term relevance that history would suggest is unrealistic.

  • I also personally think that Google will be dominating for quite a long time, no matter how popular Bing becomes. But, at the same token, I still think that spending at least a little time trying to rank on Bing can be beneficial, as they are gaining more coverage and definitely are becoming more popular. I do not envision myself ever doing more on Bing than I do on Google, though.

  • Hi Liv,

    I think the “Are you getting Scroogled?” bing video touches a nerve in the sense that basic consumer trust is absolutely key for any search engine. However, Google has spend a long time earning that trust and I don’t see that paid product ads in Google Shopping results really matter much. To move consumers from Google to bing is going to be extremely difficult. When I look for new information on some subject that I’m otherwise unfamiliar with, I just don’t *trust* bing. I do trust Google (not blindly, of course!). Things like basic consumer trust are very, very difficult to change – “Scroogled” videos or not.

  • ¿Scroogled? I’ve never heard that word. Very funny.
    Thanks

  • Google is the best. I think that google dominates for a long time. I like google.

  • Personally i think that the war google versus bing is starting… google is the best warrior

  • Nikita Adnani - Design Junction 2013/08/21 at 3:53 am

    Hi Liv,

    It would be fantastic to have a viable search engine alternative to Google. But Google does seem to have marketshare and dominance over here in Australia.

    From our website statistics, we can see that we would be lucky to attract 3% to of search volume from Bing. Most of the Bing traffic seems to be from users who have recently purchased new machines and have Bing setup as the default in IE.

    It will be interesting to check out the landscape in a couple of years to see whether Bing gets a reasonable foothold.

    Thanks
    Nikita

  • Google is the leading one out of all other search engines including bing and tons of others.. Google is taking over the internet world with time and companies like Bing can never compete Google.

    You can compare Bing Hotmail with Gmail.. Winner will be Gmail..
    Out of Google AdSense and Media.net, most of the people will go for AdSense…
    So, like many other, i also prefer marketing on Google..

  • I prefer google to bing because most of the user are from google
    here we can find more customers

  • That last ad is so funny! Thanks for writing about this, it is something that many people may not consider. In order to keep up with web marketing you always have to be one step ahead, so you have definitely pointed out some topics that marketers and business owners should be aware of and considering now.

  • Hi Liv, from a UK perspective currently Bing has a very small market share.

    I have found that Bing’s results have improved dramatically since the early days of Windows live search.

  • I have been getting a decent amount of traffic from Bing. Its about time Google has some competition.

  • Smart move by Microsoft, many people are already concerned about the amount of data that Google hold about its users. Not that Bing would do any different in that position but this campaign is very political and playing on those fears… Hardly surprising seeing as it’s being spearheaded by a former PR adviser from Clinton campaign!

  • I would keep Bing on the back of my mind when promoting a site, but currently their market share is so small that you can not see any monetary return if you put any marketing efforts in this search engine. I would concentrate only on Google.

  • Bing shouldn’t be ignored even if Google is the ‘king’.

  • With the google hummingbird changes and the loss of keyword data I think there will be quite a few people who will be looking to see how they can put more emphasis on Bing. Generally I find cpc costs lower on Bing anyway.

  • One thing that Bing recently did which Google is lagging on is properly counting social signals like real backlinks. It seems that in this regard from the publicly available information Bing is slightly ahead but who knows what secrets Google is just waiting to roll out.

    For the long term I would still stick with Google.

  • Hi, I love the tips and idea you have shared in this article. I think Google will rule over other search engine for the long time.I especially liked the part about- “Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and is a well-respected brand,”. Seems it tough task for other search engine to compete google.

  • After the latest update one of my Alexa 30.000 site with over 700 organic backlinks is still ranked PR0 on the other hand my another site with 9 links and Alexa 9.000.000 rank is evaluated by PR3. I’m hearing similar stories all around. While their evaluation systems are unreliable enough I don’t think it’s right to rely on a single search engine. All opportunities in the market should be considered.

  • Sukhbir - Zeemo 2014/03/06 at 5:45 am

    Whilst we believe that you should definitely focus on Google (it is the biggest search engine for a reason, after all), we also believe that this doesn’t mean you should ignore everyone else. Your article poses a very good argument and should certainly be some food for thought for some people.

  • Adam @ Agua Web 2014/03/26 at 6:54 am

    I used to use Google constantly, but since the integration of Bing Smart Search into Windows 8.1, it’s just easier to use Bing now on all my devices.

  • The answer to this question is not as simple as people might be expecting. I use both of them. I know, among all the search engines, Google is a class of its own. But trust me, sometimes you get more targeted traffic from bing. Several times, I got a better ROI with bing.

  • I have seen extremely great results from Google. Bing has yet to really show me calls and CTR on even the sites that rank on the 1st page. It’s clear to me that Google has the won the race, now the only question is, how long will they be at the top for? Time will tell.

  • While Bing might not have metrics as good as Google, I do find the quality of traffic from Bing generally converts to paying customers more so than Google.

  • As a general rule, I focus mainly on Google but I find my approach gets me the best of both worlds.
    The niche you are in is also a factor as to whether you should consider Bing more heavily or not. Some savvy internet user niches prefer bing because Google is sometimes a jerk and they know how spread SEO is.
    Bing can definitely become a really serious threat but that’s not for the next couple of years for sure.

  • Hi Liv,

    Although google is the predominant serp in most countries, I have noticed an increase of visitors from bings and yahoo to my sites in recent months. It could be a change in the trend.

    Indeed, I think the gap is narrowing amongst search engines, though the inertia of the biggest player is always an advantage to compete with.

  • 90 percent of the people prefer google just because the results shown here are fast and more accurate

  • It seems that Google is going to remain the 800 lb gorilla for the foreseeable future. Certainly this can’t be by chance? There must be something about them that makes people come back when they want to find something online.

    Though Bing is still a formidable contender, I think the Google algorithm just kicks them to the curb for now. The real question is whether Bing can catch up.

    Now, having said that, no one stays at the top forever. Internet companies come and go and although Google has been untouchable for many years, chances are, the landscape is eventually going to change and they’ll be eclipsed by someone who does it just a bit better. Will that be Bing? Who can tell at this point?

  • video production Sydney 2014/09/19 at 9:02 am

    google is defiantly a giant when it comes to the online world and i cant imagine that changing anytime soon

  • I personally only worry about Google, and let bing take care of itself.

  • I am trying to find out some good websites for reading. I was browsing over google and bing and located your websites. Well i enjoy your skilled blog site design and style and your posting abilities. Keep doing it.

  • Really enjoyed reading your post.Keep writing informative and useful post like these one.

  • Google has been the top dog in the game but that does not say that Bing is a small fry. I usually start of my research in google and build from that but then I also look at bing and use some of there metrics. I personally can’t say ether or is better because they both have there strong suits but if you ask me who do I start a new project with it will be Google.

  • Michael Salem _ CODECRATER 2016/04/08 at 3:10 am

    I think that marketing on search engines is one of the best forms of digital marketing. It’s long term, and focused on results. It may not be immediate like PPC, but the results will come in for years to come.

    I personally think that Google is and will continue to be the #1 search engine for years to come. However, I do not think one should only focus on Google. Many people use Bing, and it is by default a major search engine. I have had success with you and would recommend at least giving Bing a try if you have not.

    Great write up!

  • Great article here and food for thought. We personally only concentrate on Google and Bing kind of happens automatically!

  • bing is dead … it can not compete with Google ….I personally can’t say ether or is better because they both have there strong suits but if you ask me who do I start a new project with it will be Google.

  • I think google is more powerful than bing. However, I am getting decent traffic from bing as well.

  • google is more powerful than bing

  • Google is more powerful than Bing. But certain portion of search engine has been occupied by Bing and Yahoo.

  • Mohamadi Tapsoba 2016/11/13 at 6:13 am

    Hi, I love the tips and idea you have shared in this article. I think Google will rule over other search engine for the long time.I especially liked the part about- “Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and is a well-respected brand,”. Seems it tough task for other search engine to compete google.

  • cruise rodriguez 2017/05/09 at 7:26 pm

    Hello, Great concepts. I would not shy away from any search engine. From my perspective, you could actually target older people because bing is automatically installed on most pcs.

  • Hello, Great concepts. I would not shy away from any search engine. From my perspective, you could actually target older people because bing is automatically installed on most pcs.

  • see the business is on google more and thats clear , no doubts about this . I believe 80% webmaster target google and bing is automatically optimised .


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