Google is everywhere, however Bing (Microsoft’s equivalent) has way more presence than most of us realise. Microsoft have intelligently integrated Bing into our lives in many different ways.
Bing. The famously-failed search engine.
Or so we’ve come to believe.
Bing might not be as much as a failure as we seem to think. Wordstream recently brought us ten ways you might use Bing without even knowing it. Here are the first five of them:
01: Nearly half of the US uses Bing
Yep. You haven’t misread that. In March 2019, 126 million unique US users performed 6 million searches on the Bing network. Today, Bing controls 36% of the US desktop search market.
Yes, some of these people will sometimes use Google too. But 66 million people in the US ONLY use Bing. That’s a lot of people. Another 62 million use both Google and Bing.
Bing is used much more than you realise.
02: 1.5 billion Windows devices use Bing search
Windows devices are everywhere. 1.5 billion devices around the world are powered by Windows. You probably own one of them. You’re probably using one of them now.
Microsoft also owns Bing. Unsurprisingly, many Microsoft devices automatically direct your search to their very own engine, in order to generate revenue and traffic.
You might not even know you’re using Bing, but if you’re using Windows 10:
- The search bar in the bottom corner of your screen takes you to Bing.
- Cortana takes you to Bing.
- Searches from your lock screen take you to Bing.
Without you even knowing it, Microsoft is pushing you in the direction of Bing.
03: Other Microsoft products have Bing integration
You might use Microsoft products without even realising you’re using them. And we don’t just mean your operating system.
- Edge/Internet Explorer: if you use either of these browsers, your default search engine in Bing. This accounts for 15% of US desktop market users.
- Microsoft Suite: Office, Outlook, Word, Excel, Teams, Skype. Ever used a search function on any of these? That means you’ve used Bing.
- Xbox: with 65 million users, Xbox holds a big share of the gaming community. Anyone who uses their Xbox to search – they’re using Bing too.
04: Cortana and Alexa
It’s no major surprise that Cortana uses Bing. Cortana is built by Microsoft, so each Cortana voice search uses Bing.
But what might surprise you is that Alexa uses Bing.
Every time you ask Alexa a question, your answer is coming from Bing. That’s 100 million households using Bing, probably every single day.
Alexa is soon to become Facebook’s voice portal of choice. When that happens, it’ll mean a lot more Bing searches.
05: Lots of search engines partner with Bing
If you’re using Google specifically, you aren’t accessing Bing. But if you’re using any other search engine, there’s a good chance that Bing is partnered with it.
Here are just a few of the search engines that are at least partially powered by Bing:
- Yahoo
- AOL
- DuckDuckGo
- Ecosia
- MSN
… and plenty more! So you could be using a Bing partner without realising it.
Google is everywhere. But Bing has way more presence than most of us realise. Microsoft have intelligently integrated Bing into our lives in many different ways.
In an article coming soon, we’ll show you a further five ways you might be using Bing without realising…