30+ Bing Stats: Users, Revenue, and More

Google might have made it into the “Hall of Fame” by being included in the dictionary as a verb, but it’s not the only search engine available. Sure, you’ve probably never heard someone say that they’ve binged something. If you did, you probably had no idea what they meant. And, if you’re a kid of the 90s, the first thing that you likely think of when you hear the word “bing” is Chandler of Friends. However, Bing still gets over a billion visits per month on average and is the second most popular search engine across the globe.

To help you get to know Google’s main competitor better, we’ve scoured the Internet (and let’s rather not say which search engine we used to keep the article as unbiased as possible). In this article, we’ve also included some statistics about Microsoft, which owns Bing, and the search engine market in general so that you can get a more comprehensive picture of where this search engine fits into the bigger realm of things.  

30 Bing Stats: Users, Revenue, and More:

As of October 2021, Bing is available in 105 display languages. This includes the main languages such as French, German, Russian, Italian, and Spanish, but also a number of African languages, like Afrikaans, isiZulu, and Igbo, as well as a couple of Indian languages, such as Tamil, Kannada, and Hindi.

As of October 2021, Bing is available in 238 countries. It’s even available in Vatican City, the globe’s smallest fully independent nation-state.

Microsoft, which owns Bing, is one of the five tech giants that have solidified their digital imprint and grown their influence on the global economy. The other four companies are Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. Collectively these five are known as GAFAM, the few companies that dominate the digital scene.  

Source: statista.com

According to data shared by Statista, Bing averaged more than 1 billion monthly visits for the first six months of 2021. February was the only month that its total global visitor traffic did not surpass the billion mark. Since April 2021, there was a steady increase and June recorded the most worldwide visits – a whopping 1.84 billion for the first half of the year. 

As of September 2021, Bing accounted for almost 7% of the global search market. Google is still the undisputed leader by far boasting 86.64% of the market share. Yahoo is in third place with 2.75%.

Though, other sources estimate that this market share is more in favor of Google. For example, according to Backlinko, it currently has only a 2.7% share of the worldwide search engine market. 

The Microsoft Search Network includes Bing.com and websites owned and operated by Bing like AOL.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, Bing.de and Bing.co.uk. Online data about this network reveals that it boasts a 14.2% share of the global PC market. 

According to Alexa, Bing.com ranks 28th in global internet engagement. It’s up by one spot in the past 90 days. In the US, Bing was ranked 9th at the time of writing this article with the majority of its visitors coming from the United States (46.3%). 

On the other hand, according to data shared by Similarweb, Bing.com is only in 30th position according to traffic rank. With regards to category rank (search engines), it’s in third spot, as of September 2021.  

According to Similarweb, as of September 2021, almost a third (31.31%) of its traffic comes from the United States. It’s followed by China (23.77%), Germany (4.12%), Japan (3.93%), and the United Kingdom (3.88%). 

Though, Alexa estimates that a bigger chunk comes from the US (46.3%). Plus, its calculations also state that 7% of Bing’s visitors come from India and only 4.9% from China. 

Source: alexa.com

For example, Yandex is a Russian search engine and web portal. According to Statcounter GlobalStats, as of September 2021, Yandex has a whopping 41.69% search engine market share in the Russian Federation. Bing merely has 0.42%. It looked slightly better when looking only at the desktop search engine market share (0.7%), but still doesn’t come close to Yandex (46.71%).  

The average time that a visitor spends each day on Bing.com is 2 minutes and 51 seconds. 

However, Similarweb lists its average visit duration as more than double that. As of September 2021, it estimates that Bing.com’s average visit duration was 7 minutes and 8 seconds. It also estimates the pages per visit at 5.42.

While Google absolutely dominates the global search engine market irrespective of the length of the query, it’s interesting to note that Bing was used the most for one-word searches. In the case of Google, its search engine market share was bigger for longer search queries.

Source: about.ads.microsoft.com

Microsoft Search Network data reveals that 55% of searches on the Microsoft Search Network used it for online product research. Brand discovery also made up a substantial chunk with 38% of searchers using the search engines for brand discovery. In the US, product research was even more popular with 60% of searchers using the network for this purpose, while in the UK even more (65%) used it for product research.  

With regards to demographics, Microsoft Search Network data shows that the search engines are used more often by men. More than half (56%) of the searchers identify as male, compared to 44% who identify as female. The vast majority of users are also under the age of 45 (73%), while just over half indicated that they’re married with children (53% and 58% respectively). 

According to online data, 34% of searchers who use the Microsoft Search Network graduated from college. This is also reflected when you analyze the demographics by income. Almost 40% shared that they have a household income that places them in the top 25%. 

Source: statista.com

For the past five years, Microsoft’s global search advertising revenue has increased year on year. In the 2021 fiscal year, Statista’s data reveals that it generated about $8.53 billion in revenue from search advertising. 

In the 2020 fiscal year, Microsoft generated $7.74 billion in search advertising revenue. 

However, Bing can’t be credited for the entire amount as Microsoft Advertising and other external partnerships also form part of Microsoft’s search business. 

According to data shared by Statista, it’s estimated that search advertising revenue for 2025 in the United Kingdom can amount to 18.38 billion US dollars.

With a market capitalization of 1,966,6 trillion US dollars, Microsoft is the globe’s second biggest company in 2021. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, was only in fifth position with 1,538,9 trillion US dollars. The largest company as of April 2021 was Apple. While Apple and Microsoft aren’t competing over search engines, you don’t need to know a lot about computers and software to know that Apple and Microsoft are long-time rivals. 

On a side note, to make more sense of these figures, market capitalization shouldn’t be confused with market value. Market capitalization refers to the worth of a company based on the total value of all their shares. Market value is broader and looks at what a company is worth – its overall value. Various factors including corporate debt, the market environment, and profitability can impact market value. It’s useful for figuring out if the shares are overvalued and settling on a price in the event that a company needs to be sold. 

When looking at brand value, Microsoft was ranked the third most valuable tech company across the world boasting a brand value of about $410 billion US dollars. In this prestigious category, it lost the battle to Google which ranked second boasting a brand value of nearly 460 billion US dollars. 

Needless to say, Apple was the most valuable tech company globally when looking at brand value. They’re simply one of the ultimate masters when it comes to branding (something you would definitely know if you ever bought an Apple product). 

In 2021, Microsoft’s global revenue surpassed 168 billion US dollars. What makes it even more impressive is by how much it managed to increase its global revenue from 2020 to 2021. In 2020, the company’s annual revenue worldwide was just over 143 billion US dollars. While its global revenue increased each year for the past five years, this is the biggest increase during this time period. 

According to data shared by MRS Digital, by means of Microsoft Advertising, Bing has attracted half a million advertisers. Although Google is still the preferred choice, the advantage of Bing is that there’s not nearly as much competition. 

In the United Kingdom, the majority of consumers (67%) depend on search engines when they need to decide on purchases. Less than half of consumers rely on customer reviews when deciding which purchases to make. 

As of September 2021, direct traffic was Bing.com’s major source of traffic. More than 85% of its traffic came from this channel. 

Its second biggest traffic source was referrals. Just over 8% of its desktop traffic came via this channel. The top referring sites were msn.com (47.58%) and rewards.microsoft.com (8.82%). 

Search only accounted for 2.69% of its traffic. Of this, 99.77% was organic and only 0.23% was paid. 

The top organic keywords were:

• bing
• bing maps
• bing translator
• bing images

The top paid keywords were:

Social accounted for 1.85% of its traffic. YouTube was the biggest source (51.41%), followed by Facebook 18.3%, and LinkedIn 7%. 

A September 2021 analysis revealed that display advertising was merely 0.21%. 

According to data shared by Ahrefs, the most searched query on Bing in the United States as of 2021 is Facebook. It boasted a search volume of 12,983,821. It’s followed by YouTube (11,452,722), and Google (8,060,698). Yes, people are searching for Google via Bing (it’s hard not to read too much into that one). 

Other popular keywords are:

• Gmail
• Amazon
• Bing
• News for you
• Yahoo
• eBay
• Top Stories

One thing that’s clear from this data is that branded queries prevailed. More than 60% of the most searched queries were about well-known brands. Ahrefs also noted several of these search queries were branded and navigational. For example, the phrases Facebook log in and Gmail login boasted a search volume of 3.2 million and 1.3 million respectively. 

However strange you might find it, people are using Bing to search for Google and in their numbers. Globally, the keyword Google boasted the highest search volume of 40,958,757, according to Ahrefs data. It’s followed by YouTube (35,279,042) and Facebook (28,550,537). 

Other popular keywords include:

• Gmail
• Amazon
• Yahoo
• Hotmail
• eBay
• Facebook log in
• Netflix
• Google maps

As you can see, there’s not much of a difference between US and global searches. In fact, close to 70% of the top 100 US searches also appear on the global list. 

Searches that were popular globally, but not in the US include:

• Google Chrome 
• Outlook
• Daily Mail
• YouTube music

An interesting observation that Ahrefs highlights is that this data reveals that users are downloading Google Chrome via Bing. This can indicate that many are dissatisfied with the browser that they’re currently using (likely Microsoft Edge) as well as their search engine.

Data shared by Alexa reveals that 8.35% of its visitors visited its biggest rival – Google – just before visiting its search engine. Interestingly enough, 7.56% visited Google right after they visited bing.com. Could it be that the same visitors realized their mistake and returned to Google again?

In 2021, Bing had a customer satisfaction score of 71, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. In 2020, it had the same score. The highest that its score has ever been was in 2011 when it was 82. Since then it steadily declined, apart from 2016 when it jumped from 72 to 75. 

On the other hand, Google’s customer satisfaction score is 79. It has never dipped below 79  in the past five years. 

The only other search engine that has a score lower than 71 is AOL with 69. 

According to Similarweb, most users who visit Bing.com are also interested in programming and developer software. Other interests include computer electronics, consoles, and accessories. 

While Google is setting the pace, one instance where Bing was ahead of Google was with its COVID-19 interactive map. In March 2020, Microsoft launched an interactive map to share information about the COVD-19 spread. It shows the number of cases per country. Users can also get information about the currently active cases, recovered cases, and fatalities. Links to relevant videos and news stories are also included in the dashboard. According to the tech giant, it gets the data from a number of sources that include the World Health Organization (WHO), Wikipedia, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (DCD). 

On the other hand, Google only announced its new COVID-19 map feature in September 2020. The COVID layer in Maps shows important information about the number of COVID-19 cases in a region for the past seven days and whether or not the cases are increasing or decreasing. 

Perhaps the phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” partly inspired Bing and Yandex to collaborate on IndexNow, a new search engine protocol initiative that they announced earlier in October 2021. In short, with IndexNow website owners will be able to describe any alterations that they’ve made to their website. This way, they’ll no longer have to wait for web crawlers to describe these changes. 

On the Microsoft Bing blog it explains, “IndexNow is an initiative for a more efficient Internet: By telling search engines whether an URL has been changed, website owners provide a clear signal helping search engines to prioritize crawl for these URLs. IndexNow is also an initiative for a more open Internet.”

Not only did Microsoft Bing partner with Yandex, but it also announced in October 2021 that it will collaborate with Shopify to increase product selection for shoppers. Via the Shopping tab on Microsoft Bing, shoppers will be able to view a bigger range of products as well as better prices and deals. What’s more, they’ll also be able to check out by means of the Shopping tab on the search engine. On the Microsoft Bing blog, the company also states that they’re planning many more shopping enhancements to offer more convenient shopping experiences. 

According to GWI, over 80% of internet users still visit traditional text-based search engines on a weekly basis. As mentioned, Google continues to be the go-to web domain for the vast majority. However, increasingly more people are adding new search behaviors to their daily online activities, one being voice search.

GWI also reports that about 25% of all internet users in the 16-64 age group use voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri every week. It’s especially high in India and China where over 30% of internet users indicated that they’ve used a voice search assistant to collect info in the past seven days. 

As a result, several of the leading brands in the digital world are taking advantage of voice search. For example, Bing introduced voice search in September 2020 to allow users to use their voice to ask questions. All a user has to do is click on the microphone icon in the search box. A drop-down menu will show up and the search engine will play an audible noise to indicate that it’s all “ears” for your query. After you ask your question, you’ll be directed to the results page and the site will also read back the result to you. It’s available on desktop as well as in the Bing app on iOS and Android.