A lot of people do not pay attention to Bing SEO or ranking factors and purely focus on trying to rank in Google and nothing else.
However over the last couple of years Bing’s market share has been slowly increasing as Microsoft try to challenge Google in the search arena.
If you were paying attention this week you will have noticed a fundamental shift in search that is going to affect us all.
The Big Bing Has Already Happened
I’m officially dubbing the term ‘The Big Bing’ to mark the day that a simple browser update changed the world of search forever.
Mozilla released version 34 of its Firefox browser on the 1st of December 2014.
At the very top of the release notes is a critical piece of information that is going to change the search landscape forever.
Firefox have removed Google as the default search engine and replaced it with Yahoo!
If you didn’t know – it just so happens that Bing powers Yahoo’s search results.
Interestingly they also removed Google as the default search engine for Russia as well which suggests they might remove Google as the default from other country’s in the future.
What Does That Actually Mean?
Let me get straight to the point – US search share for Yahoo jumped from 9.64% to 29.4% overnight for users of the new Firefox.
Google usage dropped from 82.14% to 63.46%. In 24 hours.
That is a critical change you should be giving your full attention.
Let’s not forget that this impact was felt just 24 hours after the update was released which means there were still millions and millions of people who hadn’t updated, yet.
Is Bing Traffic Valuable?
I have heard lots of claim from people that Bing traffic isn’t worth as much, it doesn’t convert, people don’t buy things and so on.
So I decided to look at my own data to measure the quality of Bing traffic and this is what I saw-
That data tells me everything I need to know.
Traffic coming from Bing-
- Has a lower bounce rate
- Visits more pages
- Spends more time on site
- Subscribes to my list more
- Clicks more affiliate links
Take a look at your own data before passing judgement though!
The Great Bing SEO Advantage
The best thing about change, is people hate change. Change pushes people out of their comfort zones and humans are wired to avoid that.
So for those that are willing to evolve with change there is a great opportunity here.
Since 1998 SEO’s have purely focused on ranking sites in Google, for 16 solid years Google has had the sole attention of nearly every single SEO on the planet.
This had made Google’s search results highly competitive against people that have fine tuned their SEO skill sets for more than a decade.
Bing however has been largely ignored, the general theory is that if you ranking well in Google you will rank well in Bing as well.
But that is not the case – the algorithms are very different, just compare search results for the same term and you will quickly see what I mean.
So it is important that you understand those key differences to take advantage of ‘The Big Bing’ (it will catch on).
Bing Marketing – Free Tools & Resources
So with that said and before we get into the top Bing ranking factors you need to familiarise yourself with all of the free Bing marketing tools & resources.
Unlike Google, Microsoft actually produce a number of very helpful tools & guidelines in regards to SEO for Bing.
It is also worth noting that Bing are very SEO friendly as evident from the tools they offer.
Bing Webmaster Guidelines
First of all you should have a read of the Bing Webmaster Guidelines and get yourself upto speed.
It is no way near as long/complicated as Google’s guidelines so it won’t take you long to read and absorb.
Bing Webmaster Tools
The Bing Webmaster Tools is superb – if you haven’t got your site setup in there yet do it now.
It provides an awesome suite of tools including a backlink explorer! You can also see exactly which keywords you rank for, how your site indexes, diagnose problems and much more.
As of right now you will also get $100 of free advertising credit to play with – sweet!
Bing SEO Analyzer
The Bing Website Analyzer is also a great tool to discover if your pages are following Bing SEO best practices.
Just enter your URL and it will return a list of suggestions to improve your rankings across Bing & Yahoo.
Bing Webmaster Blog
Just like Google there is also a Bing Webmasters Blog which you should have a read through & subscribe to.
Some of the posts are actually quite entertaining and often have golden nuggets buried within!
Bing Search Quality Blog
Imagine if Matt Cutts and all of the Google search quality/anti spam team published a blog sharing what they’ve been trying & testing.
Well Bing do exactly that with their Search Quality Blog that offers some amazing insights into the world of search.
Contacting The Bing Webmaster Team
Last but not least, perhaps one of the best tools is the ability to contact the Bing webmaster team.
So if your site does have problems or gets hit for any reason – you can easily get in touch with the team directly to work things out.
The Top Bing Ranking Factors
So what makes Bing tick at it’s core?
What are the key differences between ranking in Google & Bing?
Here we go-
User Engagement Is Very Important
One of the strongest signals in Bing is user engagement, having strong user engagement will increase your rankings in Bing.
They measure this through a term known as ‘pogo sticking’ which is when someone performs a search, clicks on a result and then clicks back to return to the search results.
If lots of people visit your site from the search results and click the ‘back’ button then this is a clear indication of poor user engagement to Bing.
However if lots of people visit your site from the search results and do not go back to them to continue searching – this is a very very strong signal.
Click Through Rates Matter
Bing also measures click through rates from it’s search result pages and uses that data combined with the user engagement data above to improve its results.
For example all things being equal, if the #1 position gets a 20% click through rate but the #2 position gets 40% – this is a clear indication that the #2 result is more relevant.
This means you have to write your titles and descriptions with humans in mind while being specific with your keyword. Think keyword based click bait.
Social Signals Do Matter
There is a lot of debate on whether social signals impact Google search rankings.
I can categorically tell you with 100% certainty that they do and I’ve been using them to rank consistently for the past 2 years. I revealed exactly how at the recent BHW/UnGagged conference.
So rather than getting caught up in the change debate you should be making social signals a core part of your SEO strategy now. It affects you rankings in Google and it affects your rankings in Bing.
However Bing actually return posts from Facebook & Twitter embedded directly into search results that stand out from normal web results.
Bing has a much stronger reliance on social signals than Google – use that to your advantage and you will see benefits in both search engines.
Bing Authorship
Google introduced Authorship allowing people to claim content they have written so Google can determine who are the true experts in any given industry.
Granted they have removed the pretty little pictures from search results now, but Authorship is here to stay.
Bing has it’s own version of Authorship after they integrated Klout verified snapshots.
The Bing search results will then show-
- Your LinkedIn summary
- Other social profiles
- Klout score
- Influential topics
- 2 most influential moments from Twitter in the past 7 days
- 2 most influential posts from Instagram in the past 90 days.
You can also take advantage of the Bing connected pages feature.
Backlinks Are Less Important
It is important to note is that backlinks are less important in Bing then they are in Google.
If you compare the search results between Bing & Google you will notice that the top ranking sites in Bing have noticeably less backlinks.
However Bing does favour ‘editorial’ type links from within body content rather than coming from a sidebar, footer or list of links and site relevancy does matter.
Inbound Anchor Text Is More Important
Bing puts more emphasis on the anchor text usage than Google does. So if you want to rank for ‘Blue Widgets’ you need links that use the ‘Blue Widgets’ anchor text.
Bing isn’t as good as Google at keyword matching – so while Google does well with recogizing synonyms and context around a keyword, Bing need spoon feeding specifically.
However the risk here is that over optimising your anchor text will trip the Google Penguin filter.
So the trick here is to make sure that the links coming from high authority sites focus on exact anchors while the other use a mix of anchor terms.
That will allow you rank in Bing while dodging Google Penguin.
Keyword Domains Matter
Having your keyword in your domain name will help you to rank in Bing easier. It isn’t critical but it does help.
However Google does have a filter for exact match domain names so it is best to use a domain that includes your keyword but isn’t an exact match.
The only problem with that is…
Page Authority Is More Important
The other thing that you will notice when comparing search results is where Bing doesn’t place as much weight on backlinks, it does place weight on site authority.
It is much harder to rank a new domain in Bing than it is in Google. Having an aged domain will give you an extra leg up across Bing’s results.
So if you have an older domain that includes your keyword you are golden. If you just have an older domain your in a strong position as well. Where you don’t want to be is with a brand new domain.
PageRank Is Irrelevant
PageRank is a measurement of authority created in the early days of Google although it is not as relevant as it once was and hasn’t been updated for a long time now.
However it is important to note that Google PageRank does not seem to have any correlation with Bing SEO rankings – makes sense.
Content & Keyword Density Is Important
Bing prefers sites that have lots of unique content. They place much higher value on longer more engaging content than shorter content.
Just like they are behind Google in how they process language in anchor text, the same applies to your content as well.
You need to feed Bing the specific keyword you want your page to rank for. It is much better to focus on 1 page per keyword with Bing, but again be careful you don’t trip Google Panda by offering duplicate content.
Also Bing trys to eliminate duplicate content at the point of indexing. Redudant content is recognized and eliminated from search result pages but may still be available in the index.
Site Structure & Code Is Important
Bing offer a few interesting pieces of advice around your site structure and coding.
First of all they advise that content should be organized close to the surface. In other words no content should be more than 3 clicks away from the homepage.
You should also use a broad to specific structure flow. So you might go with SEO > Link Building > Blog Networks or Garden > Furniture > Chairs for example.
General Onsite Optimisation
Onsite optimization is similar for Bing SEO as it is to Google. You want to make sure your using meta title & description tags which include your exact match keyword.
Bing places a lot of emphasis on title tags but keep the user engagement signals in mind.
You should only have 1 H1 tag per page to establish the main topic then use the H2 and H3 tags to talk about sub topics.
It is also worth noting that sometimes Bing will swap out your meta description with your H1 tag in the search results so be creating with your headings – don’t just rely on exact match headings.
HTTPS Is Not Part Of Bing Ranking Factors
Google recently announced that HTTPS is now used as a ranking signal – although a very minor one.
Bing Lead Program Manager Vincent Wehren said that HTTPs is not a ranking factor and they would not bring it in because they don’t want to mess around with rankings based on a factor that has no real relevance.
Bing Search Engine Penaltys
We don’t know a whole lot about Bing’s penaltys but what we do know for sure is they are a much friendlier beast than Google.
There are certainly no crazy black and white animal updates to deal with here!
The Bing SEO Spam Filter
The Bing Index Quality team have published a few articles about the types of things they look for that are worth reading-
They go as far as to show you actual case study examples along with a lot of details about each update they make.
It is very important that you stay ontop of your outbound link profile and make sure that you are only linking to clean and related sites. Bing will punish you for this seriously.
Reciprocal linking will also get you in trouble but if you have any experience with ranking sites in Google you will already know to avoid that practice.
It is clear that the Bing SEO spam detection methods are much further behind the times than Google’s which gives us a longer leash to play on.
How To Check If You Have A Bing Penalty
Bing also make it very easy to check if your site has a penalty or not.
All you need to do is go to Bing Webmaster Tools and click on the Summary Tool.
Next look at the Site Status section – if it says Blocked: Yes – your site is penalised.
If this is the case with your site then take a look at this post to learn how to get out of the penalty box.
Are You Prepared For The Big Bing?
The Big Bing has already happened and it’s control of the search market will grow thanks to the Firefox version 34 update.
In 24 hours Google usage dropped from 82% to 63% while Bing/Yahoo usage jumped from 9% to 29% – those are numbers you cannot ignore.
That impact is measured from simply changing the default search for the USA. I will not be surprised to see future Firefox updates replace Google for other countries as well.
So have you prepared for The Big Bing?
The future of search is changing – whether you like it or not. The time to pay attention to Bing SEO is now.
170 Responses
Great piece.
I recently submitted my site to Bing and it felt good. The focus is on Google. Watch any youtube video on SEO, it’s all about how to rank on Google. This post gave me some insight into the big Bing.
Thanks Kaycee, I’m still hoping ‘The Big Bing’ will catch on.
Awesome article Matt, I really enjoy reading this and it so useful content that every blogger should know for traffic generating.
Thanks very much. Massive opportunity a lot of people are missing.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH ADMIN!!! YOUR INFORMATION IS SO HELPFUL FOR ME… AS IM WORKING ON BING TRAFFIC.
Hey :) no problem, glad you found my post
Your style is so unique compared to other folks I have read stuff
from. Many thanks for posting when you have the opportunity, Guess
I’ll just bookmark this page.
Yes I am one of a kind haha. Thanks for the bookmark, come back soon :)
Aw, this was a really nice post. Taking the time and actual effort to produce
a top notch article… but what can I say… I hesitate a whole lot and never seem to
get nearly anything done.
Thanks for the feedback, work hard and you will move forward :)
Interesting information. Thank you.
Thanks Denae
Great article
Thanks Mark
Thanks for the valuable insight! This is an informative, good quality article which is refreshing in the age of click-bait :)
Cheers Jamila
So, in your opinion is it still easier to rank on big than google?
Yes for sure
Really informative article. I have seen that ranking in Bing is pretty easier. Just number of backlinks matters.
Yes it’s generally easier
I see this blog good quality and excellent. I earn good knowledge and skill.
I try to do that with every post :)
I have been strugling with bing tools long time for my sites, even i didn’t got what is gooing on in bing tools rather than understanding bing factors. Google web master tools are way easier than bing and shows more clear effects of your recent work on website seo
Yeah I agree the interface on Bing Webmaster Tools is hard work
Bing is underrated in the seo world, i used to have an emd which was making $100 every month without any work. and yeah it got ranked after 3 days of registration.
Yeah its a great opportunity
Hi…..Matthew
I want to remove my spam score,my spam score is 8/17. I have submitted spam link file to google webmaster tool (Disavow) since 20 days ago but still the spam score is same.
So plz do help me to reduce the spam score.
Where are you getting the spam score from?
I see this blog good quality and excellent. I earn good knowledge and skill.
Thanks :)
I love Duckduckgo
Quack whack!
Your article is very relevant and important. initially we are aiming seriously at Google but when I realised that 20M+ people visit bing.com daily for search opportunities then I knew I need to target Bing and be a dominant in my niche on Tue search. thanks for your tips. Really great.
No problem Lawrence, I think Bing offers a great opportunity!
Such a help full article.
Thanks Matt!
great post
Thanks Komal!
very nice
No problem :)
We all know that search engine is the best source to drive targeted traffic and customers. Right?
Search engines like Google plays a major role in delivering potential customers and readers.
To become a succeessful business man, We have must high traffic from Google but nowadays I have noticed that It is being harder and harder to get ranked in Google.
Due to the rise of spammers, Google is improving their algorithms and removing spammers from their SERPs.
The ranking factors which you have mentioned above are very much important and It can help us to get ranked better in SERPs.
I only believe that We should must have indepth and detailed content which can help readers. If We have such types of content then We can easily drive huge organic traffic without making more efforts.
I am glad that you have shared such a wonderful article with us. :D
Does Domain Age matters for Bing??
Yes it does help
Does domain age influences on bing more or less than it does on google?
I don’t think there is much in it to be honest
I have an old domain that I finally turned into a site and it’s already on page 1 in Bing results. It hasn’t even been 2 weeks, is this a beginner’s luck thing or because it’s an exact match domain that has been sitting there for a few years?
Great article btw. I would think it makes sense that Bing is easier to rank than Google.
Bing likes EMD’s a little more than Google, but to put thing sin perspective for you – this blog ranks terribly in Bing :)
Trust me ranking on bing is harder some time cause there are only some working methods.
I think it’s much easier than Google!
I am very shocked that HTTPS is not a ranking factor for Bing, while Google is working.
Thanks for sharing this point.
Well there are a bunch of differences :)
thanks for sharing amazing article Mathew, it will help the beginners like me. Thank You. :)
No problem Robert :)
Thanks a lot for this very informative article however could you tell us why bing shows lessor pages in bing search than google even after submitting them the sitemap
How much time has passed?
Wow I didn’t know all that about Bing, but to be honest, most the time when we optimize a web page for any given keyword, we normally start ranking faster and better in Bing than we do in Google. It’s almost as if Bing ranks you without doing any SEO.
Rankings in Google take forever and its 10X harder.
Perhaps you should offer bing seo as a service then :)
that greats news, at least it will finish the monopoly situation, when healthy competition comes in the market it will definitely help the users. however Bing needs to upgrade web master tools, especially the analytics area.
I hope so!
Thanks for your amazing, informative article!
Even though you lightly touched on Bing Webmaster Tool’s connected pages I find it a fantastic opportunity to insert all the social media pages associated with your website, thus drawing in additional attention to your website in search results.
I never knew that Bing offers a Bing Authorship, I’m going to have to start implementing that!
It is so ironic, I was actually thinking about Bing and their consideration of backlinks this morning and how much they actually weigh in on quantity and quality of backlinks.
I will have to start looking for Bing Penalties, I assumed they didn’t penalize (at least at this stage of their growth as a search engine).
I love the image search on bing. Have you compared the image search on bing to google? :)
I haven’t actually
I have an estimatet 300 pages online – testing different SEO approaches. One thing all my black sites boostet with PBN’s has in common – are – They are top 3 in BING. BH definetly has a great impact on BING ratings. I track with authoritylabs – and same sites has rankings off 50+ in google.
So for now I would say – “HIT” the spam buttom – if you just have smaller niche sites – which you will target BING users only.
Good information :)
Matthew:
I have a couple of bing sites I want to rank. Are you currently taking on clients for this? It is something I want to do but just have not had time to get to. I would like to outsource if possible.
Yes please see http://agency.matthewwoodward.co.uk/
Hi there,
was just wondering for those who have commented on the increase of reach/clicks in Bing as compared to Google, since the default pages are only for North America, Belarussians, Kazakhstans, and Russians, is your target market these countries then? Does that explain the increase?
Wan
Really intersting point. Bing traffic does convert and does make money but it is just a much smaller amount than Google brings. I think the new marketshare gained by the other SE is really significant.
But I also know that I changed the default SE the moment I realized this had been changed. Most people don’t like when things like this are forced to them so I know many people will switch back immediately.
I’m more concerned with all the new people switching to Firefox and not realizing it.
This also makes me wonder… Didn’t Firefox make lots of money via Google partnerships etc? What is happening to that with these changes.
It’s not the size that matters, it’s what you do with it that counts.
Hope this doesn’t get posted twice; I had an issue with the first try.
Anyways…. I have a few EMD sites that died on google about 3 years ago, but have consistently ranked on yahoo/bing for a very long time (and they still do.)
They are decent volume keywords that I am ranking for, and they do generate consistent money (about 1/4 as much money as they generated when they ranked on page 1 of google, but its still decent.)
Anyways, I noticed that EMD’s seem to get a really big advantage on Bing (not sure if this is the case with really high volume kewords though.)
However, according to this post, you are at a serious disadvantage when using a new domain (even if EMD I’m guessing?)
Heres the question: Do you think I would be better off buying an aged domain that didn’t have any of the keywords in the domain name? OR just buying a brand new EMD domain?
I use spam tools like GSA Search Engine ranker etc… (which is how my existing older EMD sites rank… all of their keywords were just built with spammy SEO tools.)
I’m leaning more towards just buying brand new EMD domains… cheaper too.
After 2 or 3 months of spamming, the EMD domains that I bouth 2 or 3 months ago aren’t ranking very consistently. Sometimes the lower volume ones rank on page 1, but then they bounce to like page 5, or they dispensary completely for awhile.
What is even more strange, is that sometimes my crappy auto generated subpages rank on page 1, even though the homepage is no where to be found (these rankings don’t last though.)
If bing/yahoo hates autogenerated “dupe” content so much, then why do they cache all of my auto generated content pages so easily? Hell, I don’t even spin the content on my subpages; I just use WP Robot to generate it.
My homepage IS quality content and is all hand written, unique content, and the onpage SEO is spot on.
Also, my existing older sites that rank VERY well indeed have auto generated content for most of their subpages, so I’m pretty sure that the auto content subpages isn’t hurting anything :)
The way my newer EMD’s are bouncing around reminds me a lot of the google dance bs. Tell me it isn’t so :)
I think I spammed way too many exact achor links to them. I am now in the process of spreading out my anchor text more though. Hope that helps.
I’m probably just over-paranoid; it is probably just a matter of time before the new sites rank well (well, at least the lower volume ones… not sure about the higher volume/competition ones.)
Wow, that turned into a really long comment :)
Again, what do you think? Am I wasting my time getting brand new EMD domains? Will it take a year+ to rank those, VS aged domains?
Great feedback =D
To be honest I haven’t bothered with EMD domains for a long time now
Hi Matthew,
Great article and I was trying to access your Bing video (“Jump Start Your Bing SEO With This Free Video Training Course”) and after verifying my email address, it’s not listed as a resource. Could you help me here? I’m really interested in watching it.
Thanks!
Nevermind, I found it!
Haha don’t worry your weren’t the only one :P
The chart is dramatic, but what does the chart for total market share look like today? Is Firefox 34 adoption moving total search engine market share significantly yet?
I’m going to give it a few weeks and see how it looks!
Great post, and very thorough. Bing has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Although our page ranks very well in Google I always found it odd that the Bing/Yahoo results were totally different (and generally worse). I’m going to go through your list of tips and see if I can figure some of this out. Interestingly we get more traffic from Duck Duck Go right now than we do Bing…
Oooo that is interesting, can’t say I have ever had any traffic from there so you must be doing something right
I think it still needs a few months to see what actually happens on this search war. “Creating sites that users love” should be the ultimate goal for everyone on the IM world.
I’m not really one for waiting to see what happens, I’m going to put everything in place so if it does happen – I’m already there.
What…? Google have to pay to get traffic?
They did for the firefox default search bar
Great article on Bing. Lots of folks overlook this great resource for traffic. Google may be at the head of the pack right now but there is still a lot of potential with Bing and folks are missing a lot of opportunity by dismissing Bing.
That is fine by me :) Most of my success in SEO is due to people dismissing things
Hey Matt,
Great post…
I heard this was coming about a week ago and I was so happy because I hate google. I been using Bing for months after google robots kept busting my balls with their capcha… while trying to do research…
Bing Banged Google square in the kisser I love it… this made my day….
Who types captchas in manually anymore? It’s 2014 =D
Hi Matt
Nice post and appreciate the share.
We are already spending a lot of time focusing on Bing, as a hedge against all the increased Panda/Penguin challenges
I think the big one would be if/when Apple changes Safari to default to Bing like they have on Siri
This is kinda a medium sized loss for Google.
To put this change in perspective, Firefox has 13 percent roughly of desktop traffic.
So if half of Firefox users become Yahoo searchers, this would move 6.5 percent of desktop search away from Google to Bing powered search.
Significant, but not a giant game changer
Firefox is not a player at all in the mobile market, and half of search now is mobile and growing.
Google is default in Android search, which is majority of mobile market.
Hi Matthew,
you really kick ass :-) This is the kind of clean and latest news information I totally love. To be honest, this “little” Firefox Update just hadn’t got through to me before reading your post.
I, too, consider this to be an interesting shift in the SEO landscape and I appreciate more pressure to be wielded on Google. In my opinion, they rely on their almost monopoly status and focus on their ambition to dominate loads of different technology niches, way too much. In my eyes, the quality of the search results has diminished.
When it comes to the quality of Bing traffic, I have made the exerience that Bind Ads in fact did not convert very well, but this is not true for the Bing organic traffic.
Keep up the great work and stay tuned!
Well they are certainly getting leaned on by the European Union right now!
Matt,
Just had a conversation about Bing a few weeks ago where I made fun of its importance. I also knew of the Firefox & Yahoo deal but didn’t put it together!
Am now furiously working on getting all of my client sites up to date for Bing search.
I was just in Bing webmaster tools yesterday and was wondering what was up with the big jump in impressions from Bing all of a sudden. I thought it was something I had done.
Thanks for the timely write-up. I pushed it over to reddit for you as a thanks ;).
Thats very kind of you thanks :)
Just wanted to thank you Matthew for the great content and value you add.
Thanks Des!
I can confirm the news WITH PROOF Matt! I do a lot of bing ads, and yesterday my clicks were THREE TIMES more than EVER before!
I am sure a direct result of more people on bing…
Hope you had those ad budgets under control =D
Hi Matt.
I have also read a study where they say that Bing values ​​the “meta keywords” to filter spam!
What do you think ?
Looking at search results it doesnt seem to be all that relevant
Bing Seo,thats amazing for me.Thanks mate
Good luck!
Hey Matthew, great post again.
I’m loving this, although my site might be a tad new (8 months-ish), the domain isn’t (around 2 years old) – might affect things a bit?
The one thing that really stands out for me is that you can actually contact Bing and get things sorted out, unlike the big G that seems to be a big brother type, concealing info and not wanting to help the little guys.
Good news, in my book.
I think you would do alright with that!
Nice to see Bing getting the love!
I’ve also noticed a big lift in Bing paid search volume on a client project I am working on. It now brings in over 20% of the PPC volume. It used to be more like 10%. It is definitely getting more market share. The traffic is cheaper and with half the CPA’s of Google. Quality is lower though.
Organic wise, I still find it hit and miss but now I now the share is improving will pay more attention.
Plus you get to see keyword data!
Nick
Time to start spending on bing ads! No pesky quality score either :)
Delighted for them. I like a few of the commentators above have sites that rank very well in Bing but do piss poor in Google despite trying everything in the book.
So do you thing this will hamper all the plans for big authority domains that people have been harping on about if they can now get just enough traffic from Bing / Yahoo with crap sites instead. Is it worth the effort??
Gaz
Well it depends how you look at it, traffic is traffic!
Fantastic news, Matt.
And informative post.
I recently submitted my sites to Bing, just few weeks ago…
Finally the revenge against Google is coming.
I am on the side of David. Will he defeat Goliath completely?
Stranger things have happened in the world!
I think you just made my day! : )
No problem :)
Thanks for the awesome post Matt! I’ve definitely been dragging my feet with Bing, although I do I have a Web Master account setup at least :-) Still, time to start taking it a little more seriously I think!
Did you submit your sitemaps at least :P
Bing is eeeasy to rank on. On page all done properly and PBN links will shoot you to pos 1 on Bing in no time.
Bish bash bosh =D
If the above statistics is true (bing+yahoo have 35% of US market) that shows that perhaps the time has come to change leader google from his throne. In Russia, yandex is dominated, and in China is baidu, so for google remains only European market where there is no competition unfortunately.
Except for the European Union
Great post, and the move by FireFox is hardly surprising.
I am one of those crazy people who manually sets Bing as their default search engine in browsers. Yes I know! My reasons for the switch are mostly because when I want to research something or really look for it on the web, I need a search engine that hasn’t been gamed by SEOs to appear high in search rankings. Interestingly, since the beginning of 2013 (when i switched my search engine to Bing) I see more relevant results in Bing than Google which is why I dumped it (google has improved btw…but still not enough).
With Google I would click on links that appeared to have answers only to be fooled into looking at a completely non relevant page or worse have nothing of the sort anywhere on the page. It was truly frustrating. Anyhow, now I only use Google, if I cannot find on Bing which is probably only 10% of the time. Even then Google is mostly unable to help so its a wasted trip anyway.
Very interesting – it’s a switch I’ve considered as Bing results are generally better but change and all that :P
Awesome writeup Matt. Never thought Bing would surface like this.
BTW voted for your article on GrowthHackers.
Thanks.
Very kind of you thank!
Very nice this post your blog
Very comment on this blog of my post.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the update about Bing SEO.
No doubt that i saw an increase in traffic to my blog through YAHOO/BING.
Everyone is surprised because everyone have been focusing on Google and their update.
I have learned a lot from this.
Take care and have a nice day ahead.
-Oloyede Jamiu
Following the crowd sucks anyway :P
Hi Matthew,
When it comes to search traffic, i never considered Yahoo and Bing. I am even not sure whether my blog is properly submitted to Bing and Yahoo or not.
After reading this Big Bing theory, i am going to make sure that i am on every search engine.
Regards,
Better be getting your hustle on then =D
But can’t the users of Firefox just change the default search engine to Google. Like when people using internet explorer goes from Bing to Google.
Yes they can change back, but the key thing is its now changed by default.
Agree with Matthew, there are a lot of users who don’t bother changing the default search engine. If they search for a few things and those searches give them the results they were after, they are more likely to continue just using that default. Hence this really is a HUGE thing for BING. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google saw a huge hit to its revenue from this as well.
I am glad that this happened. So the search engine traffic starts to spread a little more. We can’t just depend on Google.
Alright! A new playground. LOL Even if it drops a little, there’s still money to be made.
I updated but Google was still the default se.
I like that Bing is more transparent.
“The Big Bing” is really cute!
I love new playgrounds =D
But this is only a change in Firefox users.
And Firefox has been steadily losing popularity over the years as Chrome and mobile increased.
I just saw a stat that said 24% use Firefox and it’s 25% on my blog.
I’d say Google let this go because they don’t see it as important long term. Or at least not important enough to outbid Yahoo.
My back of the fag packet calculations say… at the very most a 6 point swing for Bing overall assuming all Firefox users accept the change… which they won’t.
I’d say we are more likely to see a further fall in Firefox popularity and at best Bing/yahoo gets a boost of a couple of points.
Bing and yahoo combined already had just under 30% market share in the US and this change should get them above 30%, but it’s an incremental change i think not a revolution.
Perhaps a bigger threat to Google might be how well Windows 10 works out as a mobile operating system.
True and there is always going to a browser war but underneath all of this is the point that when change comes, it comes – we need to be ready!
Voted and shared. Great, thought provoking read. Their BWT while similar in concept to GWT offers a wealth of useful info. I wish GWT would sit up and take note.
Thanks Simon!
Thanks for the great insights. I have also noticed the bump and fall recently. May be Mozilla is gaining more power against the Chrome. Mozilla now can suggest which search engine I intend to use.
And, when it comes to organic traffic does it matter either it is from Google or Bing? All that should matter is what they were looking for. So, bing results and conversions are also as important as Google’s. Thanks for clearing that part too.
No problem :)
Seriously, Matt? Bing SEO??
mind-blowing..
Enjoy :)
matt i am a silent reader of your blog and your blog is one my fav. Sadly i opted in to get to the Bing SEO training course but i was not redirected to any bing related course..
Just follow the page to the subscriber resources
You said user engagement was important, that if less people clicked the back button you would rank higher. Do you think it could be possible to have multiple ips go to your site from bing (so that the percentage of people who stayed on the page would go up) and make yourself rank higher?
Try it and find out ;)
The Big Bing! Nice one Matt. Great analysis on your Google Analytics. Im sure the volume isn’t the same as Google, but Bing certainly can provide quality.
Thanks Ryan :)
Thanks for this Matt, such brilliant information that I have just been and signed up for Bing webmaster tools and submitted my site etc. None of which I had bothered to do before, great stuff!
Tut tut :P
HA the Big Bing Theory ;)
Those are some crazy numbers for Google to drop by.
They have to be doing something to pull that around because it has to have a monetary effect on them surely?
Perhaps Google will buy firefox? ….stranger things have happened
Will be looking forward to your video info on the subject
Dan
Great write up Matt, just saw this over on inbound also
I’m pretty sure there stock price is going to drop in the next financial quarter!
That is a crazy amount of change for 24 hours. More than I thought it would be when I heard about it as I thought that Chrome had more browser market share these days.
Personally, I like Bing traffic and have found it easier to get ranked (even with new domains) than the Big G. It’ll be interesting to see if they get power hungry as their market share grows.
Yeah it is massive, imagine what that will look like long term!
Wahou amazing article. I’m gonna prepare myself for the french big bing . Such a great opportunity !
It is indeed :)
I like your “Big Bing Theory” :P
Always good to see a big player like FireFox mix things up… wonder how their compensation model has changed, or what Yahoo/Bing paid for the change to take place.
Firefox was making $300 million a year off it’s deal with Google.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/01/22/so-why-is-google-funding-its-own-competition-in-the-firefox-os/
Hahaha then please help it catch on :P
Only $300 million? Heck I’m going to get them to change the default search to this blog!
Great article Matt as always. Matt having never really looked at Bing in the past, I see one of my small sites which now days is nowhere in Google is position 1 and 2 for the EMD. Is there a tool to check the monthly traffic for the keyword along with the PPC ?
Kind regards
Joe
Hey,
Yes it’s all within Bing Webmaster Tools
Whoa that’s a huge difference in US searches. How did Google let this slip, I think they were supporting Mozilla for years :D
Anyway, competition is definitely good for us, because one day by getting penalized by Google we might not lose our entire business…one day…
Yeah it’s a huge drop for Google!
I love your quality content, good thing you bring to the community these changes on Bing.
So I can get ahead of my competitors in Latin America, I have little following your blog and it is more advanced than I have seen. In the Latin market there is nothing similar to your information, Latinos gurus always all the information for themselves are saved, they are too selfish, sorry for my English, I understand 80% and I’m using the google translator.
Thank you for your golden information, I’m getting ahead than all my competitors thanks to you :)
Now I will focus on all search engines :)
Greetings from the Mexican Pacific Coast.
Johnny
Hey,
Well I’m pretty sure a lot of my readers use Firefox so they should have spotted it :P
Hablas ingles muy bien, pero mi espanol is no bueno mas de tiempo!
That’s funny, when my sites got slapped years ago from Google my Bing traffic remained steady-ish. In fact, to this day Google rarely sends traffic and it all comes from Bing. A couple of my sites rank really well, some 1st SERP for some keywords and this is all with the Good Old Days of Over Optimization.
I have had exactly the same experience :)
Wow great post Matt, thanks for the work.
If you had to describe Google and Bing with one concept or idea (I mean just one or two words) what would they be?
“Search Engine” is cheating :D
I mean something like Google: Links, Bing: Authority.
Hmmm well wait for next weeks post on Googles new signal ;)
Who would have thought this day would come.
I’m thinking that duckduckgo is soon to follow
Its more than possible in this crazy world!
And I m really wait some another search engine to beat Google. It;s gonna be a fun :)
Haha, anythings possible!