Bing and Google Side by Side

September 8, 2009

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about and tried Bing, Microsoft’s rebranded Live search engine.

I’m not going to rehash all the pros and cons that everyone else has covered by now. I do want to talk about a site I found where you can compare Bing and Google results right next to each other.

It’s cleverly named Bing & Google, and it’s interesting to type in your keywords and compare the two side by side. I liked the results I got for “seo diva” (which btw is not my goal keyword) much better in Google than in Bing. Since Google serves up about 80% of all searches, that’s fine with me.

Nevertheless, MSN searchers tend to be older and generally more affluent, so if that’s your target market it is in your best interest to rank well in Live Bing.

This hearkens back to the Baby Boomer marketing issue. Since most PCs are sold with the MSN search function toggled as the default, older and less sophisticated web searchers tend to use it as their address bar. They have no idea there is an actual address bar at the top of the page. In fact, I’m surprised MSN doesn’t reflect a higher percentage of searches just because of that.

Anyway, how do you rank better in MSN’s current search engine? The MSN search engine algorithms seem to place more weight on keywords and content than on the inbound links that Google likes, although they still definitely help. This doesn’t mean you should amp up the keyword density in your site’s content; that could blow you out of the rankings on Google, which nobody wants. I do recommend you review your content, making sure the keywords you want to rank for are there. If your site is light on content, you may want to add more. And since MSN places more emphasis on Meta tags, make sure they reflect the keywords you’re reaching for.