Beyond Google: getting your business on Bing

How many of your customers skip Google

Google still takes most searches. StatCounter's September 2026 numbers put it at 85% of US searches across all devices. The other 15% sounds like a rounding error. It stops sounding like one when you split it by device.

On US desktops Bing had 18.8% of searches, Yahoo 4.1% and DuckDuckGo 1.9%. Yahoo and DuckDuckGo both pull their main results from Bing. Add them up and Bing's index answered about a quarter of desktop searches. Canada was within a point of that. On phones the three together drop to about 5%, because almost every phone ships with Google as its search engine.

So the useful question is where your buyers do their research. Someone comparing property managers on a work computer is on a desktop, and office PCs come with Edge and Bing as the defaults. Plenty of people never change them. Someone looking for dinner at 9 pm is on a phone, and Bing barely matters to them. StatCounter counts laptops as desktops, which matters for a rental owner. A family comparing beach rentals for a March trip often does it on a laptop over a few evenings, and that is the screen where Bing's share is highest.

One setup covers more than Bing

Getting your business onto Bing gets it into more places than Bing.com:

• Yahoo. Its help pages say Bing generates its search results.
• DuckDuckGo gets most of its regular links from Bing.
• Ecosia uses Bing in most regions.
• Copilot grounds its answers in Bing search, and ChatGPT lists Microsoft among its search partners.

For a business with North American customers we would care about Yahoo and DuckDuckGo first. Together they are about 4% of US searches, and more on desktop. Copilot and ChatGPT come along with the same setup.

One catch. DuckDuckGo's maps and address results come from Apple Maps. To show up when someone searches a street or a neighbourhood there, you also need a free Apple Business Connect listing. It covers Apple Maps and Siri too, so we would set it up anyway.

What to have in place, in order

None of this needs a monthly plan. It is setup work, done once and checked when something changes. If you have a web person, ask them about these.

1. A Bing Places listing. It is free, at bing.com/forbusiness since October 2025, and it can import your Google Business Profile.
2. Your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, Bing's version of Google Search Console. It imports straight from Search Console.
3. A sitemap Bing can find. The file Google uses works for Bing too.
4. IndexNow. Each time a page changes, the site sends Bing a short note so it does not have to find the change on its own. Google ignores it, so it only helps on Bing's side.
5. An Apple Business Connect listing.

If you only do two this week, make them the listing and the Webmaster Tools import. Both are free. With a Google profile and Search Console already set up, the two imports are an afternoon's work, most of it checking what came across. IndexNow is the only part that needs code. We added it to how our own sites publish this month. It reports only the pages whose content changed, so a rebuild with no edits sends nothing.

If your Google profile is already in good shape, the Bing import does most of the work. Our guide to Google Business Profile management covers what a good profile needs first.

What the AI assistants change

When someone asks ChatGPT or Copilot which property manager to call, the assistant reads a few pages and answers in the chat. Often nobody clicks through. Your page still did the work, but only if it held the facts worth repeating.

So put them in plain text on the page. That means your business name, the towns you serve, what you sell, a rough price and your hours. A page that hides those in images or behind "contact us for pricing" leaves the assistant nothing to say about you.

Copilot reads through Bing, so the setup above is also how you get read by it. We would not pay for "AI search optimization" before the listing, the Webmaster Tools import and a page with real facts are done. Most of it is the same work.

Is it worth the time?

For most local businesses, yes. It is one afternoon and no fees. Against that, you become visible on the engines behind about a quarter of desktop searches. Whether those searchers pick you still depends on the rest of your site.

Bing ads can wait. You will read that Microsoft Ads clicks cost less than Google's, but the figures we found came from ad-tool vendors with no study behind them. Ads charge you on every click. The setup above does not. If you want help checking where your business shows up today, send us your site. The local SEO cost guide covers what the ongoing work is worth.

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