Transcript
Speaker: Hello, welcome back to the Untitled SEO Podcast. Today we're going to talk about Bing. Bing doesn't get talked about very much in the world of SEO, at least not yet. In this video I'm going to look at why you possibly should re -address the way you view Bing. Maybe you should have Bing as a part of your SEO strategy.
Speaker: So this podcast has come about because there was a news article that came out today where Bing, well Microsoft, are proudly telling the world that they now have 140 million active users on Bing. Now this is a tiny drop in the ocean compared to the number of people who use Google. It's minuscule, but it is interesting. So why is their market share up?
Speaker: There used to be a joke in SEO, or at least in my circles, that people only use Bing by accident. If you buy a new Microsoft device, it's probably going to have Bing set as the default search engine. In fact, there was a weird period where for a little while, when you installed some other bits of software, for some reason Bing would also then get set as your default search. Very strange. We have to look at how much Microsoft invests in Bing.
Speaker: I mean, you know, they've chucked some money at it. That's true. But they've not always loved it. It's been a little bit like, I don't know, maybe a pet that wasn't perhaps house trained very well. Google tried to sell Bing to Apple or Apple tried to buy Bing off Microsoft, one of those two.
Speaker: So it hasn't always had all the investment, but over the last few years it has changed a lot. Especially with the integrations and the hand -in -hand AI things, so OpenAI who create chat GPT, there is some of their technology in being search results. Maybe people like that. We know that a small proportion of search appetite is being fulfilled by AI now.
Speaker: I don't think it's, we're miles away from it being able to take over search engines, but it's always worth trying to look what's just beyond the bleeding edge in SEO. So Bing is on the rise and
Speaker: you know, let's not forget Google hasn't always been the top dog. They have been the most popular search engine for many, many years. But it wasn't always that way. When I started in SEO, people optimized what we call doorway pages like little front end bits of their site for Altavista, Hotbot, Jeeves, Yahoo, I'm not going to start listing old search engines.
Speaker: We're still in the very early days of the internet. That means we're still in the early days of SEO. Who knows, in 50 years' time, how people will be using the internet. I'm getting off topic. So if you want to include being as a part of your SEO strategy, what can you do? How much time should you invest on it?
Speaker: To answer the second question first, I wouldn't invest a lot of time. I'd sort of cock an eye and look over at Bing every now and then just to see what's going on. But one thing you can do is sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools. It's free, and just like with Google Search Console, used to be called Webmaster Tools, it's a useful way of just staying a bit better informed.
Speaker: Ignorance is not rewarded in SEO at all. It really, really isn't. So just sign up for Webmaster Tools. I think that's probably about all you need to do. Although if you're interested in the differences between how Google looks at your website and how Bing looks at your website and how they both rank you,
Speaker: You can kind of, in a very simplistic way, think of Bing's abilities as being like Google's abilities 15 maybe 10 years ago.
Speaker: Bing can't crawl as well as Google. It can't understand context as well as Google. So it relies on some of the things that Google now ignores, like meta keywords, remember them? But don't go and start putting meta keywords all over everything. We're just getting that horrible mess that we were 15 years ago.
Speaker: So it looks at things in a far more simplistic way. And because of that, I don't think there's probably much you need to do to your website. If somebody who's an expert in being SEO is watching this and screaming at me, get in touch. I wanna know. I wanna know if I'm wrong. But for now,
Speaker: There's words in here somewhere. There's words in this brain. For now, just be aware that Bing is on the rise, probably because of the AI tools that it integrates very well with, and go sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools. That's it for today. Thank you for listening and watching, depending on where you are. Please send comments, like, share, subscribe, all that cool stuff.
Speaker: I've been Andrew Laws, I shall remain Andrew Laws of Yesio. Until the next time, tutty bye.
