Overview
This blog compares Google and Bing in 2025, breaking down their market share, user demographics, SEO factors, and advertising opportunities to help small businesses maximize their online presence.
Highlights
- • Market Share and User Base
- • Platform Features & Tools
- • Ranking Factors and SEO Differences
- • Paid Advertising Opportunities
- • Bonus Section: The Rise of Alternative Search Methods
Introduction
In the battle for online search dominance, Google may wear the crown—but Bing is far from a bystander. While most businesses laser-focus on Google, Bing quietly serves a valuable, often overlooked audience that can boost reach and conversions when used strategically.
This guide unpacks what sets these platforms apart in 2025, helping small businesses sharpen their marketing game, tap into diverse audiences, and future-proof their online strategy.
Market Share and User Base
When it comes to search engines, Google reigns supreme—but Bing quietly commands a niche audience that small businesses shouldn’t ignore. Understanding the differences in market share and user demographics between the two platforms can help businesses tailor their marketing strategies and get the most from their online presence.
Google’s Dominance
Google currently holds approximately 90% of the global market share according to recent data from Statista, which is a slight decline from recent years. Every day, Google processes billions of searches across the globe, making it the go-to destination for everything from local business lookups to product research and breaking news.
One key reason for Google’s dominance is its mobile-first approach. As mobile device use has skyrocketed, Google has optimized its search experience to cater to on-the-go users, offering lightning-fast results, voice search, and seamless integration with Google Maps.
Additionally, Google’s search ecosystem thrives on user-generated content like reviews, social shares, and Q&A sections, making it an indispensable tool for discovering trends, recommendations, and social proof.
Bing’s Niche Strength
While Bing may only hold about 4% of the global market share, its influence is more substantial in certain regions. This is especially true in the U.S., where it accounts for nearly 8% of searches—a slight increase over previous years.
Bing’s strength lies in the desktop market, where it benefits from being the default search engine on Microsoft devices like Windows PCs, the Edge browser, Xbox consoles, and Cortana voice assistant.
Bing’s focus leans heavily toward directories and local listings, making it an effective platform for businesses that rely on local visibility. Tools like Bing Places for Business help companies claim and optimize their local profiles, ensuring they appear in searches related to their industry and geography.
Key Demographic Differences
- • Google’s audience is generally younger, more diverse, and heavily mobile-first. This opens the door for businesses in fast-moving industries like e-commerce, food delivery, entertainment, and fashion to connect with a tech-savvy audience that values convenience and social interaction.
- • Bing’s user base tends to be older, slightly higher-income, and more desktop-oriented. This makes it an excellent channel for businesses targeting professionals, homeowners, or consumers with disposable income, especially in B2B, home services, and luxury markets.
Why This Matters for Small Businesses
The takeaway? Ignoring Bing means missing out on a valuable, often less competitive audience. While Google will likely deliver the bulk of your traffic, Bing can supplement your reach, especially on desktop, with users who may be more willing to engage and convert.
For small businesses, the smartest approach is to diversify: optimize for both platforms, tailor content to each audience, and use paid advertising strategically to cover gaps. By doing so, businesses can broaden their customer base, improve brand visibility, and build resilience against algorithm changes on any single platform.
Platform Features & Tools
Both Google and Bing offer features designed to help businesses get discovered, connect with customers, and measure performance. Knowing what tools each platform offers can help small businesses unlock more value and sharpen their online presence.
Google’s Business-Boosting Tools
Google offers an impressive lineup of tools and features that help businesses show up where it matters most.
Google Business Profile
This free tool lets businesses create a profile that appears in local search results and Google Maps. It includes details like business hours, photos, reviews, and contact info, which makes it a must-have for local businesses.
Google Maps Integration
With Maps, customers can easily find directions, read reviews, and discover nearby businesses. Optimizing your Google Business Profile ensures you stand out in searches from nearby users.
Rich Snippets, Featured Snippets, and People Also Ask
Google’s search results go beyond simple blue links. Rich snippets show star ratings, pricing, and other details. Featured snippets and the “People Also Ask” box can help businesses capture prime real estate on the results page, boosting visibility and clicks in the process.
Google Analytics and Search Console
These free tools help businesses track website traffic, monitor search performance, and uncover insights about how people are finding and interacting with their sites.
Bing’s Unique Perks
Bing offers its own set of valuable features, many of which are underused. This means small businesses that take advantage of these tools have a great chance to stand out.
Bing Places for Business
Similar to Google Business Profile, this free tool lets businesses manage their local listings, add photos, respond to reviews, and appear in Bing’s local search results.
Visual Search Tools
Bing’s visual search lets users search using images instead of text. This is especially useful for retail, fashion, home décor, and other visually driven industries.
Microsoft Rewards Program
Bing’s loyalty program incentivizes users to search on Bing by offering points for rewards like gift cards and sweepstakes, which helps drive consistent engagement on the platform.
Chat-Integrated Search With Microsoft Copilot
Bing has integrated chat-driven search powered by Microsoft Copilot that allows users to ask natural-language questions and get detailed, conversational responses, which opens new ways for businesses to get discovered.
Ranking Factors and SEO Differences
While Google and Bing share many of the same core SEO principles, they each have unique ranking factors that can influence where your website lands in search results. Understanding these differences helps small businesses optimize effectively across both platforms.
Shared Fundamentals
No matter the search engine, there are a few foundational best practices that no business can afford to overlook. At their core, Google and Bing both reward websites that prioritize:
- • High-quality, relevant content: Content that answers user questions, provides value, and is regularly updated stands out on both platforms.
- • Backlinks and domain authority: Both search engines consider backlinks—links from other reputable websites—as a signal of trust and authority.
- • Mobile-friendliness and page speed: With mobile users dominating the web, fast-loading, mobile-responsive sites are essential for ranking well.
Google-Specific Ranking Factors
- • E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness): Google favors websites that demonstrate deep knowledge, credibility, and trustworthiness, especially in industries like healthcare, finance, and legal services.
- • Core Web Vitals: These metrics measure real-world user experience, including loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. These factors make technical performance a ranking priority.
- • User intent and behavior: Google uses signals like click-through rates, dwell time, and bounce rates to assess whether a page satisfies what users are looking for and then adjusts the rankings accordingly.
Bing-Specific Ranking Factors
- • Greater weight on exact match keywords: Bing tends to place slightly more emphasis on exact keyword matches, which makes it beneficial to include your target keywords naturally in your content.
- • Importance of metadata (title tags, meta descriptions): Well-crafted title tags and meta descriptions can have a stronger influence on Bing rankings compared to Google, where they matter more for click-throughs than pure rankings.
- • Better understanding of multimedia: Bing has made strides in recognizing and indexing multimedia elements like images, videos, and even audio, making it a solid platform for businesses with visual or video-heavy content.
- • Integration with social signals: Bing factors in social media signals, especially from platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, when assessing page authority. This is something that Google has downplayed in recent years.
Why This Matters for Small Businesses
For small businesses, knowing these SEO differences offers a competitive edge. By focusing on Google’s emphasis on authority and user experience while also optimizing for Bing’s keyword precision, strong metadata, and social integration, businesses can broaden their reach and improve performance across both platforms.
Paid Advertising Opportunities
When it comes to paid advertising, both Google and Bing (through Microsoft Ads) offer small businesses powerful ways to reach new customers. That said, the platforms differ in scope, cost, and targeting features. Knowing these differences is key to helping businesses spend smarter and get better results.
Google Ads: Massive Reach
Google Ads is the undisputed giant in online advertising. With access to Google Search, the Display Network, YouTube, and Google Shopping, it gives small businesses unparalleled reach across billions of daily searches, millions of websites, and the world’s second-largest search engine, YouTube.
Google Ads offers:
- • Search ads that appear directly in search results
- • Display ads on partner websites across the internet
- • Video ads on YouTube, the leading video platform
- • Shopping ads that showcase products with images and prices
On top of that, Google Ads provides advanced targeting options, including audience segments, detailed demographics, interests, remarketing, and location targeting. These are all powered by AI and machine learning automation to optimize campaigns in real time.
However, all this power comes at a price: competition. Google’s popularity means many businesses are bidding for the same keywords, driving up cost-per-click (CPC) and making it more challenging for small businesses with limited budgets to stand out.
Microsoft Ads: Underrated and Cost-Effective
Microsoft Ads often flies under the radar, but it can deliver excellent value, especially for small businesses. It covers Bing, Yahoo, and AOL, giving access to an often overlooked combined search audience.
Key advantages of Microsoft Ads include:
- • Lower CPC and less competition compared to Google Ads, which allows small businesses to stretch their advertising budgets further.
- • Strong reach on desktop through default placements on Windows PCs, Xbox, and the Edge browser.
- • Integration with LinkedIn targeting is a unique edge. Advertisers can target based on LinkedIn profiles, job functions, industries, and companies, making it especially useful for B2B campaigns.
Can You Advertise on Both Google and Bing?
For small businesses, combining Google Ads’ massive reach with Microsoft Ads’ cost efficiency can be a winning strategy. Google helps you capture scale and mobile audiences, while Microsoft Ads helps you reach desktop users and specific professional segments without breaking the bank.
Diversifying ad spend across both platforms improves visibility, balances risk, and gives businesses access to a broader and more varied customer base.
Bonus Section: The Rise of Alternative Search Methods
While Google and Bing still dominate traditional search, a new wave of alternative search methods is reshaping how people find information online. For small businesses, understanding these shifts is key to staying visible and competitive.
Social Search
Social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are no longer just for entertainment—they’ve become powerful search engines in their own right. More and more people, especially among younger audiences, turn to these platforms to discover:
- • Product reviews
- • Local business recommendations
- • How-to tutorials
- • Travel tips and dining suggestions
In fact, research shows that Gen Z increasingly bypasses Google and heads straight to TikTok or Instagram when searching for where to eat, what to buy, or how to solve a problem. This shift creates new opportunities for businesses to get discovered, but only if they’re creating engaging, searchable social content.
AI and Chatbot Search
The rise of AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and You.com is changing the game further. These platforms allow users to:
- • Ask natural language questions (e.g., “What’s the best sushi restaurant near me?”)
- • Receive personalized, conversational answers
- • Skip sifting through dozens of links and get curated insights or summaries
For small businesses, this presents early opportunities to stand out. Optimizing online content—like FAQs, customer reviews, service descriptions, and product details—so it’s clear, structured, and factual increases the chances that AI-driven platforms will pull your business into their responses.
Maximize Your Reach With LinkNow
Small businesses can no longer afford to focus solely on Google while overlooking the unique opportunities that Bing and other search platforms offer. By optimizing for multiple platforms, small businesses can diversify their online presence, increase brand visibility, and tap into different customer segments without putting all their eggs in one basket.
But let’s be honest—juggling the ever-changing demands of SEO, content optimization, and paid advertising across multiple search engines isn’t easy. That’s where LinkNow comes in. We specialize in helping small businesses like yours dominate both Google and Bing, ultimately driving more traffic, leads, and sales.
Contact us today and let’s unlock your business’s full search potential!
