Google vs Bing: Which search engine brings more traffic?

Google vs Bing: Which search engine brings more traffic? Google, by far, in Romania and almost everywhere: over 90% of desktop searches and over 95% on mobile. The useful question is different: is it worth doing anything for Bing? The answer, from data on the sites we manage, is yes, with little effort, because Bing brings between 2% and 8% of organic traffic, a different audience (desktop, businesses, Windows users) and, since 2023, powers Copilot answers and part of ChatGPT search.

This guide sets out the figures, explains where Bing traffic comes from, what differs in ranking and which quick settings make the site visible on both without a separate strategy.

Google vs Bing: Which search engine brings more traffic?

Market shares

Market	Google	Bing	Others (Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Yandex)
Romania, all devices	approximately 95%	2-3%	below 2%
Romania, desktop	approximately 90%	6-8%	2-3%
Global, all devices	approximately 90%	4%	6%
Global, desktop	approximately 80%	10-12%	8%

The figures are indicative, from public usage statistics for 2025-2026; they vary by month and source. The pattern is stable: Bing is a desktop engine, with users who have not changed the default engine in Windows and Edge, so more office and business users.

What we see on client sites

Across 30 sites monitored in 2025, organic traffic from Bing accounted for between 1,5% (shops with young, mobile audiences) and 9% (business services, desktop) of total organic traffic; the median was around 4%. Bing's conversion rate was equal to or slightly higher than Google's on service sites, because the desktop audience searches for suppliers during working hours. At 4% of traffic and equal conversion, Bing is worth as much as a small campaign, without a cost per click.

Where Bing traffic comes from in 2026

• Classic Bing search, from Edge and the Windows search bar.
• Copilot (in Windows, Edge, Microsoft 365): generated answers cite pages from Bing's index, with links.
• ChatGPT with search: for some requests it uses Bing results alongside its own crawler; a page well indexed in Bing has a chance of being cited there.
• DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and other engines that use Bing's index wholly or partly.

So "Bing traffic" is actually traffic from the entire ecosystem relying on Bing's index, including AI assistants; the main reason Bing indexing is worth five minutes a month. How sites get into assistants' answers is described in the article on how to build a site indexed by AI.

Ranking differences

1. Classic signals matter more at Bing: words in the title, address and first paragraphs carry more weight; Bing is more literal than Google in matching the query.
2. Links: Bing assesses domain quality, but seems more sensitive to the number of links from trusted sources and less to their context.
3. Social signals and mentions: Bing has stated that it uses social network signals as a popularity indicator; Google has not.
4. Domain and page age: Bing visibly favours pages and domains with a long history.
5. Multimedia content: well-described images and videos carry more weight in Bing, and results often include visual modules.
6. Indexing: Bing accepts instant notifications through IndexNow (an HTTP request on publication), while Google does not; Bing usually indexes more slowly without IndexNow and faster with it.
7. Updates: Bing does not have announced updates like Google; fluctuations are smoother.

A site correctly optimised for Google (intent-based content, clear structure, links, clean technical setup) is also optimised for Bing; the differences show at the edges, not in the strategy. The general guide is in the article on optimising a site step by step.

What to do for Bing, in 30 minutes

1. Bing Webmaster Tools: add the site by importing the property from Search Console (one click, no separate verification). You receive performance, indexing and error reports and its own SEO audit , sometimes more explicit than Google's.
2. Submit the sitemap, the same one as for Google.
3. Enable IndexNow: major platforms (WordPress through SEO plugins, shops) do this with a key; custom sites send a request on every publication or change. New pages appear in Bing within minutes, and the same notification reaches Yandex and other IndexNow partners.
4. Check Bing reports to ensure you are not blocking bingbot through robots.txt or the firewall; protection services blocking "unknown" bots sometimes block it.
5. Bing Places for Business for local businesses, the equivalent of Google Business Profile, with import from it.
6. Once a month, the Bing performance report: pages and queries, compared with Google; large differences indicate indexing problems.

What not to do

• Do not write separate content "for Bing"; use the same pages and strategy.
• Do not buy links because "Bing counts them"; Google counts them too, negatively.
• Do not ignore Bing for shops: Microsoft Shopping and Copilot product results come from Microsoft's Merchant Center feed, free and similar to Google's.
• Do not draw conclusions from Analytics alone: Copilot and ChatGPT traffic sometimes appears as direct or referral traffic, not Bing organic; check referral sources.

How to measure correctly

Search Console for Google, Bing Webmaster Tools for Bing, with the same metrics (clicks, impressions, position); Analytics to compare behaviour (engagement rate, conversions) by source. The rule: compare rates, not volumes; 4% of traffic with 3% conversion deserves attention, 4% with 0,2% does not. The method for reading Google reports is in the complete guide to Search Console; Bing reports follow the same logic, plus a prioritised SEO recommendations section.

Audience differences in practice

On a business services site we monitor, 88% of Bing visitors came from desktop (compared with 41% from Google), during working hours, with longer sessions and a quote-request rate 30% above Google's. The explanation is simple: they are employees searching for a supplier from their work computer, with Edge and the default engine. On a shop selling products for young people, Bing brought 1,2% of traffic, almost all desktop, with conversion below half of Google's. The conclusion for your time budget: if you sell to businesses, Bing deserves full configuration and monthly checks; if you sell to young consumers on mobile, minimal configuration is enough.

Bing's webmaster tools in brief

Performance reports similar to Search Console (queries, pages, countries, devices), an indexing report with crawled addresses and errors, URL inspection, sitemaps, a site SEO scanner with recommendations classified by severity (missing titles, duplicate descriptions, images without alt text), a keyword research tool with Bing volumes (useful as a second free source of volumes), and IndexNow configuration. Data is retained for six months. Importing from Search Console brings properties and sitemaps in one click; the rest is configured in ten minutes and needs attention only monthly afterwards.

IndexNow in detail

The open protocol through which a site tells participating engines (Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver and others) that an address has been added, changed or deleted: an HTTP request with the address and a key hosted on the site. Google does not participate. For WordPress, the main SEO plugins send automatically; for shops, most platforms have an option or extension; for custom sites, a ten-line function called on publication. The effect: new pages appear in Bing within minutes, and deleted ones disappear just as quickly, eliminating reports of old 404s. On our site, IndexNow runs on every publication, and the Bing report shows crawling within the same minute.

What changes with AI

Both engines place generated answers above results (AI Overviews and AI Mode at Google, Copilot at Bing), and the cited sources are well-ranked, well-structured pages in each engine's index. The difference for a site: being indexed in Bing means being eligible for Copilot and partly for ChatGPT, reaching an audience Google does not bring. The structure of cited content is the same for all systems, described in the article on adapting content for AI Overviews; the effect on traffic is in the article on AI Mode and organic traffic.

Practical conclusion

Google brings the traffic; Bing brings a supplement of a few percent, with a different audience and a gateway to Microsoft and OpenAI assistants, at the cost of 30 minutes of setup and five minutes a month. Do both with the same content and link strategy, described in the article on strategies for growing organic traffic, and check monthly that neither bot is blocked, as we show in the guide to indexing errors.

Sources

• Google Search Central, how Google Search works: Google's ranking systems, for comparison.
• Search Console Help, performance report: the metrics you compare with those in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Source references

• Google Search Central, cum funcționează Căutarea Google
• Ajutor Search Console, raportul de performanță