Successful internet marketing is impossible without focusing your efforts on Google. The company has a huge presence in the field of online search as well as PPC advertising. Due to this, many advertisers end up ignoring other search engines like Yahoo and Bing, which may not be a very good strategy.
Although Bing has a much smaller market share than Google, it does have a lot of potential. For example, Bing is already leading the way as far as video search is concerned. Even Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt recognizes the fact that Bing is a well run and highly competitive search engine and also their biggest competitor.
For sites that have not tapped this opportunity yet, there is a possibility of gaining 5-10% incremental traffic, ultimately resulting in increased revenues. Some websites have even an increase of up to 15% in their traffic through Bing.
Some of the reasons why Bing’s market share is expected to grow are their long term strategic plan, their focus and investment in search, and their innovation. Bing’s market share has increased by 30% according to ComScore reports, after its deal with Yahoo.
Drawbacks of Bing include poor handling of redirects, delayed indexing and crawling issues. The redirect glitches are the biggest problem for SEO efforts, as they make changing URLs troublesome.
You should also keep in mind that Bing caters to a somewhat different demographic. According to Microsoft, Bing users are 31% more likely to make a purchase than average web users and 11% more likely than Google users. So ignoring Bing means ignoring a considerably large, ready to shop demographic.