As far as you're concerned, most people nowadays use Google for searching.

But you should now take the time and learn a bit about Bing searching experience and facts. Why? imply put, Bing is the new one in the room, but with the recent deal between !icrosoft and "ahoo to ser#e Bing search rele#ant ads to "ahoo users, that really changes the case $

Microsoft Bing : Background and Tools

!icrosoft launched Bing almost a year ago and since then it's been creating a great bu%% around it, mostly for &' experts and agencies. (t's self explanatory if we take into account that its ranking algorithm is pretty different from Google, but mainly because it's a new traffic and re#enue source.

)ot long ago, !icrosoft sealed a deal with "ahoo *thus creating an unprecedented ri#alry for Google+ and "ahoo agreed to share its search ,uota for ser#ing !icrosoft Ad-enter sponsored results. o, each time you search with "ahoo, it's #ery probable to see Bing ads. .his new gig /ust propelled Bing's search market share to some 012. )ot bad for a one year running search ser#ice.

o it's #ery important to understand how Bing works as this new search engine gains momentum. (f you search for the same term on both Bing and Google, you will most than probably see different results. .his is why &' and &! experts all around the world ha#e been playing around with Bing, trying to understand how its ranking algorithm works.

Bing Webmaster Tools

)ot only did !icrosoft create ,uite a stir around Bing with its social communities including blogs and forums, but they'#e recently launched Bing Webmaster .ools , a set of tools similar to Google's Webmaster .ools. Bing's tools are e#en cooler than Google's, considering its polished user interface and some ad#anced extra features and metrics such as Audience (ntelligence which shows and e#en predicts your site's demographics and e#olution in time. All that makes Bing's Webmaster .ools a powerful toolkit.

.his is what Bing Webmaster .ools look like and some of the metrics it offers for special insight. Because of this, Google recently introduced (ntelligence metrics for audience themsel#es. All in all, Bing is a cool new powerful toy to play with and we should take ad#antage of it while it's still at the begining.

Bing vs Google : SEO

As mentioned before, Bing and Google results are pretty much different. .o see that in action, you can use this nice tool called Bingle ..his nifty tool allows us to open Bing and Google side by side in the same 3window3 and compare search results from both search engines, therefore seeing differences for the same search terms.

4ollowing, ( will present the main differences that &' experts disco#ered while testing and playing around optimi%ing elements both onpage *text and html+ and offpage *links a.o.+. 5ele#ant research has shown experts that Bing does treat your website differently from Google indeed.

PageRank (PR ! "ot t#at im$ortant to Bing

Whaat ?? "es, it is true indeed. 6age5ank is Google's patented algorithm for assigning each page in your website a score and finally a score to your entire site7domain. .his score ranges from 1 to 81 and is based on the number of internal7external and incoming *most important+ links in your website. .his score actually reflects each page's search result strength, or how popular it is.

&xperience has shown that 65 9 or e#en 65 8 pages ha#e scored high *meaning top ten results+ on Bing search engine. .hat would of course ne#er happen at Google, as top ten positions are usually split between highest 65 pages. As higher a 65 gets, that close to :8 in Google you get. Bing shows #ice #ersa.

Backlinks ! %ess im$ortant for Bing &

Although still important, backlinks *links pointing to your website from other sites+ don't seem to count that much for Bing as for Google. 4or example, to score high *top 81+ in Google for a particular search term you ha#e to ha#e a significant number of relevant backlinks to your site's page, thus achie#ing a high 65 also.

But as we mentioned before, Google's patented 65 doesn't apply to Bing also. 5ecursi#ely, a #ery high number of backlinks won't specifically impro#e your ranking in Bing. .op 81 results in Bing ha#e fewer backlinks than Google.

Bing is more 'las# friendl(

"ou may or may not know that Google actually dislikes flash content. .hey'#e /ust recently made an agreement with Adobe to become more flash content friendly and be more compatible. Bing on the other hand, seems to ha#e no problem at all with crawling flash content rich websites.

'res# )ontent ! "ot t#at *m$ortant

5ecent tests ha#e shown that Bing clearly lacks the great indexing speed Google brags about. And it's true if we consider Google's latest big thing, their -affeine launch. -affeine is actually Google's indexing system on throttle, such that Google is indexing fresh content all the time for important sites.

Bing doesn't ha#e that power because they're new and maybe they intentionally gi#e less importance to that. 6retty odd though, as e#ery person on this planet wants their website to be seen almost instantly.

*nbound +nc#or Te,t ! Matters a lot in Bing

Although this is important to Google too, it seems Bing pays a lot more attention to this element. .he anchor text is that particular text that usually defines a link's text, you know that ;a href<3www.yoursite.com3=Anchor text;7a=.

(nbound anchor text means links coming to your site's pages from other sites, particularly authority sites or simply ,uality sources, like other outside pages that ha#e a high Bing score. !ore importantly, Bing gi#es a lot of weight to pages that ha#e the same or at least #ery rele#ant title to the backlink.

4or example, if your page's title is ;title='nline Ad#ertising;7title= and the anchor text of the backlink is ;a href<3www.yoursite.com3='nline Ad#ertising;7a= , then Bing will simply lo#e you and gi#e your site or page more weight for that particular search term.

Page +ut#orit( ! -uge 'actor for Bing

uch authority is usually gi#en to .>? *.op >e#el ?omains+ such as .edu , .go# , .ac.uk and other. o if you ha#e backlinks coming from sites ha#ing any of those extensions, then you ha#e /ust struck gold with Bing. Also, a factor that both Google and Bing pay attention to is domain age. But Bing /ust seems to pay a lot more attention to domain age.