What Comparing Bing and Google Rankings Can Tell You About Your SEO
Most SEO professionals spend their time obsessing over Google, and for good reason: Google commands roughly 90% of global search traffic, while estimates put Bing at just 3 to 4%. But if you’re ignoring Bing, you’re leaving a surprisingly useful diagnostic tool on the table.
Comparing how your site performs across both search engines isn’t just about chasing Bing traffic. It’s about understanding why the gap exists and using that gap to identify exactly what Google thinks is missing from your site.
Here’s what the comparison can tell you, and how to use it to improve your work.
SERP Example
I have 14 years of experience in SEO and digital marketing, but I was in-house for the last 7 of those years. My agency just launched last summer, and one of my goals is to rank locally in my area. The big city is Vancouver, but I’ve built a page for a neighboring city called White Rock. This page is very new and doesn’t have any links to it (yet), but to my surprise, it’s ranking in Bing for “White Rock SEO,” though it’s nowhere to be found in Google.
I wasn’t expecting instant results from either search engine. As I said, the page is brand new, but why did it rank so quickly in Bing?
What does this mean, and what can we learn from it?
Why the Gap Exists in the First Place
Bing and Google are both trying to solve the same problem: surface the most relevant, trustworthy result for any given search, but they solve it differently.
Bing still rewards many of the traditional SEO signals that dominated search a decade ago: keyword usage, on-page optimization, metadata, domain age, and raw link volume. It’s a more literal, technical engine. If you’ve done your homework on the fundamentals, Bing tends to recognize it quickly.
Google has evolved well beyond those signals. It now weighs user behavior, topical depth, content quality, brand authority, and a range of trust signals that can’t easily be engineered. It’s trying to understand not just what your page says, but whether you’re genuinely the best answer for what someone actually needs.
This means that ranking well on Bing but struggling on Google is usually a sign that your fundamentals are solid, but something deeper is missing.
What to Look For When You Compare
Pull up your top 10 to 20 target keywords and check your rankings in both search engines. Look for patterns, not outliers. A few things to pay attention to:
- Where you rank well in both: These are your strongest pages. They have good on-page SEO, reasonable authority, and content that satisfies intent across both algorithms. Use these as your benchmark.
- Where you rank well in Bing but not Google: This is your most useful data. It tells you the page has solid fundamentals but is missing something Google specifically values. This gap is your to-do list.
- Where you rank well in Google but not Bing: Less common, but it happens. Usually means you have strong brand signals or high-quality backlinks that Bing isn’t fully crediting yet.
You rank poorly in both competitive keywords and weak content or thin authority. These need more foundational work before any algorithm will reward you.
Takeaways You Can Act On
Once you’ve identified your Bing-strong, Google-weak pages, here’s how to diagnose what’s holding them back:
- Check search intent alignment. Look at what’s actually ranking on page one in Google for that keyword. Is Google surfacing listicles, comparison pages, how-to guides, or product pages? If your content format doesn’t match what Google believes users want, you’ll struggle regardless of how well-optimized the page is. Bing is more forgiving here.
- Audit your content depth. Google increasingly rewards sites that demonstrate topical authority — meaning you cover a subject comprehensively, not just one keyword at a time. If your ranking page is a standalone article with no supporting content around it, Google may not trust that your site genuinely owns that topic. Bing evaluates pages more individually.
- Evaluate your backlink quality. Bing places more weight on the number of links pointing to a page. Google is far more discerning — it wants editorial links from relevant, trusted sources. If your link profile is broad but lacks genuinely authoritative references, that gap will show up in Google rankings before it shows up in Bing.
- Look at your brand footprint. Does your business or name appear anywhere outside your own website? Google uses off-site mentions, brand searches, and entity associations as trust signals. Bing doesn’t weigh these nearly as heavily. If Google doesn’t know who you are beyond your own domain, it’s slower to trust you.
- Run a Core Web Vitals check. Google’s page experience signals — load speed, visual stability, and responsiveness — are a confirmed ranking factor. If your pages are technically slow or unstable, Google penalizes them. Bing cares about speed, too, but far less punishingly.
AI SEO Factor
Molly Nogami & Ben Tannenbaum wrote a recent article for Search Engine Land on how Bing, not Google, shapes brands like ChatGPT’s recommendations.
They chose NYC hotels because it’s a crowded, mature market with juggernauts. After running the prompt “what are the best hotels in New York City” 68 times, they identified which hotels appeared most consistently and which were nearly invisible.
They picked the Baccarat Hotel as the “test client” because it appeared only once (1.5% of the time), despite strong reviews and clear alignment with the prompt’s intent. They wanted to know whether it could change that.
Interesting findings:
- You can dominate query fanouts on Google SERPs and still underperform in ChatGPT brand mentions.
- Bing matters most. Ranking in Bing articles for fanouts aligns more directly with ChatGPT mentions — not just citations.
- In verticals dominated by third-party content, you face complex digital PR paths to increase visibility.
Big Takeaway
The Bing vs. Google comparison isn’t about optimizing for two different search engines. It’s about using a more lenient algorithm as a mirror. When Bing rewards you, and Google doesn’t, Google is telling you something specific, and that signal is worth listening to.
Strong Bing rankings mean your foundation is working. The work now is building the layer of trust, authority, and depth that Google requires before it’s willing to send you to the top.
Start with the gap. The answers are already in the data.
