Should You Consider Bing For Your Global SEO Plan?
I was surprised to hear that Bing has 33% of the search market share in the United States as of August 2017. I felt it was worth researching how much it is used globally and if we should be discussing Bing more with clients.
The Statista website is a great resource for finding information on global browser usage. There are other services that can provide such information, but this one provides easily accessible, free reports.
After reviewing the report, it is clear the market with the most acceptance of Bing is the U.S., but other countries with a double digit percentage of users are:
- United Kingdom 26%
- Taiwan 24%
- France 19%
- Hong Kong 19%
- Canada 17%
- Norway 17%
- Australia 12%
- Austria 12%
- Belgium 12%
- Germany 12%
Globally, Bing has a 9% search market share. Many of the countries listed above are in Europe, but as a whole, Bing only has a 9% share in Europe, APAC is even lower at 3%. It is interesting that while Asia is only at 3%, 24% of Taiwan searches are done on Bing.
Your SEO plan may value mobile search over desktop search and if that is the case then Google is by far the leader according to a Search Engine Land article. The article states that Google reports 50% of its overall searches are made from mobile devices.
Bing’s mobile search volume is insignificant from a global perspective. However, individual markets may be exceptions to consider for your specific markets of interest.
Many countries do not use Bing at all, like South Korea, where the top three search engines, Naver (74%), Daum (16%) and Google (10%), own the search market entirely.
In China, Google is a small player with a less than 2% market share. Bing does not even register on the radar.
Some countries do use Bing to a respectable level, as noted above, and if these markets are important to you, then you may wish to include Bing in your global SEO/SEM plans.
