Should We Be Using Bing? Maybe We Should Rather Than Google

For years, most of us have never really thought about which search engine we use.

We search Google.

That’s simply what people do.

Google is by far the biggest search engine in the world, so why would we use anything else?

But perhaps we should ask a different question:

Does Google always give us the best answer?

There is another search engine that deserves more attention: Microsoft Bing.

And our recent experience suggests there may be a good reason to try it.

It’s not about replacing Google

Let’s be realistic.

Bing is not going to suddenly replace Google.

Google is enormously bigger, and if you run a website, Google remains impossible to ignore.

But size isn’t the same thing as relevance.

The real question is much simpler:

Which search engine actually gives me what I was looking for?

Search should be about relevance

A search engine shouldn’t simply find pages containing words that are somehow connected to your search.

It should try to understand what you actually want.

If you search for restaurants in Edirne, for example, a useful search engine should understand that you want information about restaurants in Edirne.

It shouldn’t simply think:

restaurant + food = anything vaguely related to restaurants or food.

That may be semantic relevance.

It isn’t necessarily useful relevance.

And this is where things get interesting.

What we are seeing on our own website

We run EdirneTurkey.com, an English-language website providing information about Edirne and Turkey for foreign visitors.

Because we monitor our traffic and search data, we can see where visitors come from and which pages they reach.

Recently, we’ve been comparing Google and Bing.

Some of the Bing traffic is strikingly specific.

A visitor in Denver, USA, reached our article Taxi Payment Rules in Turkey from Bing.

Another visitor in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, reached Vehicle Documents Required in Turkey from Bing.

Those are highly specific informational pages.

The visitors appear to be finding exactly the sort of information those pages provide.

Then there is Google.

Our Google Search Console data has shown some remarkably strange associations.

One example was our Edirne restaurant page appearing for a search along the lines of:

“best tacos near me”

There is nothing on that page about tacos.

It is an Edirne restaurant guide.

So what happened?

Google may have found a semantic connection between the words and subjects.

But from the user’s point of view, that’s not enough.

A result can be related without being relevant.

Maybe we should try both

This isn’t an argument for abandoning Google.

Use Google.

Use Bing.

Search for the same thing on both.

Compare the results.

Which one actually understood your question?

Sometimes Google will be better.

Sometimes Bing will be better.

And sometimes both will get it wrong.

That’s fine.

The important thing is that we shouldn’t automatically assume that the biggest search engine is always the best search engine for every search.

And this matters even more now

Search is changing.

Bing is increasingly connected to Microsoft’s AI services, including Copilot, and Microsoft has introduced tools that show website owners when their content is being used as a source in AI-generated answers.

That means the future of search may not simply be about clicking one of ten blue links.

It may increasingly be about which sources an AI system decides are relevant enough to use.

That makes relevance even more important.

So should we be using Bing?

Maybe.

Not instead of Google.

Alongside Google.

Try both.

Don’t choose a search engine simply because it is the biggest.

Choose the one that gives you the answer you actually wanted.

And if you run a website, watch both of them carefully. They may not see your content in quite the same way.

Google is still the giant.

But perhaps it’s time we stopped assuming the giant is always right.

Maybe we should see what the other guy has to say.