Why Pages Rank in Google but Not in Bing

You will have a wide variety of options for your company’s digital strategy. For example, when you review your website performance across different platforms, you may see a startling trend where the home page has a significant amount of traffic coming from both Bing and Google, but the traffic from Bing is essentially nonexistent. Webmasters need to understand the reason behind the significant difference between “Google and Bing”, the two search engines. In addition to Google, Bing is capturing a significant portion of the search engine market, so webmasters who neglect to consider both engines risk losing a substantial amount of traffic. To have a fully-rounded digital marketing strategy, it is important to understand the ways that different engines will crawl and catalogue your website.

The Core Difference Between Google and Bing Search Engines

Both search engines, Google and Bing search engines have two fundamental differences; one is based on the algorithms that are used to provide results for user queries, and the other is based on the order in which Google and Bing index websites.

Even though both search engines are trying to provide the same level of relevancy in their answers to a user query, the processes by which they get there differ widely, as Google focuses primarily on topical authority, semantic understanding of the data, and mobile usability, while Bing more heavily weighs exact keyword matches to search queries, traditional on-page factors and social signals.

Due to the differences between how Google and Bing index a website, there are many times when you will find that the Google and Bing URLs indexed by both engines will not match. A website that has been optimised for Semantic search may have a lack of metadata or extreme keyword placement and therefore will not rank well with Bing.

Conversely, a website that gains significant social engagement and interacts regularly with its online audience may do very well with Bing, but due to the differences in how Google and Bing transcribe and index pages, they may not receive a benefit. The best way to fully take advantage of Google and Bing’s differences is by mastering the techniques of Dual engine SEO.

Mobile First Indexing vs Single Indexing

One major difference between Bing and Google search engines is how Google and Bing index their result pages. Since September 2020, Google has switched to mobile-first indexing, meaning that Google uses the mobile version of each piece of content when it is being indexed and ranked. Therefore, if you have a mobile version of your website that does not include as much content or is slower to render than the desktop version, it could negatively impact your rankings on Google.

Unlike Google, however, Bing typically has one index for both desktop and mobile webpages and maintains a desktop-centric focus in this index. This structural discrepancy between these two search engines is one of the primary reasons that Google and Bing’s indexed URLs don’t match. Therefore, if you are a business that has a poor mobile experience but has a strong desktop website, you may rank high on Bing but not be included in the top ranking results for Google. If you want to perform effective dual engine SEO, your website must be responsive, fully functional, and offer a rich user experience for both Google and Bing.

Backlinks Quality vs Quantity

Both Bing and Google want your backlinks as a sign of trust. While they both value backlinks as a form of voting on your content, the factors used to evaluate those votes are different for each search engine. Google has changed how it ranks backlinks, favouring relevance and diversity over sheer numbers. It’s more important what kind of links you have, the quality of those links, and the context within which those links appear than it is how many backlinks you have.

Conversely, Bing places greater emphasis on the total number of links, and also particular domain extensions, i.e. how many.edu or.gov domains are linking to your content. Bing rewards backlinks from established educational and government domains much more than Google does. This illustrates a further difference between Bing and Google as search engines.

So, a campaign designed around building relevant niche links would be successful on Google, but a dual-engine SEO campaign that focused on gaining authority links that were prestigious would increase your visibility on Bing.

On Page SEO Content Depth vs Technical Structure

Analysing on-page SEO helps identify many subtle differences and similarities between Bing SEO vs Google SEO. Bing SEO tends to be more of a “traditional” search engine, while Google’s sophisticated AI enables the search engine to accurately determine a searcher’s intent and preferences.

This allows Google to provide long-form, highly detailed content to its visitors, even though some of the keywords in your content do not match those used in your original content. In general, Google is more likely to favour pages with at least 400 words of high-value content that has been created by you.

Unlike Google, Bing relies heavily on matching title tags, meta descriptions and headings exactly to the keywords being searched for on Bing. Additionally, while there are similarities between Google and Bing about the need for site architecture, Google places a high degree of importance on structured site architecture; Bing does not provide as much leeway for technical errors or omissions within metadata.

If you discover that Google and Bing’s indexed URLs don’t match, double-check your header and meta tag structures, as Bing may have filtered your page(s) due to missing or incorrect technical elements, which Google was capable of ignoring.

Social Media Signals

One clear difference in dual-engine SEO strategies is how they treat social media. Google has made it clear for many years that social signals (including likes and shares) are not direct ranking factors… although they help drive traffic, being viral does not equate the number of social signals “likes & shares” as an instant method of improving organic rank on Google.

In contrast, Bing considers the social signals as a prominent ranking factor. The more a company builds its presence through social channels (i.e, Facebook, Twitter), the more Bing places value on the brand’s credibility and authority. As a result, there is an opportunity for brands that engage with social media platforms, but do not succeed with traditional SEO to take advantage of visibility on google alternatives through Bing.

Navigating the Dual Engine Landscape

To create an effective dual search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy for both Google and Bing, marketers should take an even-handed approach. This means that websites should not only be optimised for Google but also provide a solid technical foundation combined with properly formatted metadata for Bing. In addition, websites should have content that is rich in semantically relevant keywords that Google recognises, but also use appropriate keywords in defined keyword placements for Bing.

For companies that are competing in markets that are highly competitive, such as companies offering digital marketing services in Dubai, failure to optimise for Bing means that these businesses are losing revenue opportunities.

While numerous factors affect Bing’s ranking algorithm and Google’s ranking algorithm, and how well a website will rank on each, the processes and results are often quite different. By understanding the differences between how Google and Bing index webpages, how they assign social signals to websites, and their differences in focus, search marketers can also make sure that their content is visible to their target audience, whether they search through Google or Bing.

In conclusion, the reason your pages might rank on Google but not Bing often comes down to specific technical or algorithmic preferences. By auditing your site for both sets of criteria, you can close the gap where Google and Bing indexed URLs don’t match and secure a robust presence across the entire search landscape.