As technology continues to evolve, so do search engines. Microsoft’s Bing has been at the forefront of this evolution, introducing its AI-powered search engine in 2020. In this article, we’ll dive deep into the technology behind Bing AI Search and explore how Microsoft uses artificial intelligence (AI) to improve web content.
We’ll also look at AI’s impact on the search industry and explore some AI-powered features in Microsoft’s search engine. Finally, we’ll discuss what’s next for Microsoft’s AI-powered search.
Bing matters more than its headline number suggests, and less than Microsoft would like. Globally it holds about 5 percent of search against roughly 90 percent for Google. On desktop, though, it runs above 10 percent, and in the United States it sits near 10 percent across all devices. For a business selling to people at work on a Windows machine, that is not a rounding error. For everyone else, it is a bonus rather than a strategy.
Key Takeaways
- Bing is roughly 5 percent of global search. Google is roughly 90 percent. Plan accordingly.
- Desktop is where Bing lives, at around 10 percent of desktop search and close to zero on mobile, because Windows and Edge ship it by default.
- That makes Bing a B2B consideration. If your buyer sits at a work computer, they may well be on Bing without having chosen it.
- You do not optimize separately for Bing. Good SEO serves both, and there is no second set of tactics worth learning.
- Submit your site to Bing Webmaster Tools. It is free, takes ten minutes, and is the only Bing specific job most businesses need to do.
What is Bing AI search?
It was the name Microsoft used for the AI answers it added to Bing in early 2023. Rather than returning only a list of links, Bing would generate a written answer and cite the pages it drew from. Google now does the same thing through AI Overviews, and the feature has become ordinary rather than novel.
The practical consequence for a business is the same on either engine. When the answer appears above the results, fewer people click through, and the pages that get cited are the ones that answered the question plainly. That is the whole game now, and it is why the way you structure a page matters as much as the keywords on it.
What happened to Bing AI?
It became Copilot. Microsoft launched an AI chat experience inside Bing in early 2023, then folded the branding into Copilot, which now runs across Windows, Edge, and Microsoft 365. If you are searching for Bing AI you are looking for something that no longer goes by that name.
The strategic point is what it did not do. Microsoft bet that AI answers would break Google grip on search, and the market barely moved. Bing went from under 3 percent to around 5 percent globally over three years. Google remains near 90 percent. The disruption everybody predicted in 2023 did not arrive, at least not from Bing.
Where Bing did gain, the reason was distribution rather than quality. Copilot ships inside Edge and Windows, and enterprises get it through Microsoft 365. People do not choose Bing so much as arrive on it. That tells you where your Bing traffic will come from if you have any.
Should a small business optimize for Bing?
Not as a separate project. There is no meaningful second discipline here, and anybody selling you Bing SEO as a distinct service is selling you the same work twice.
The things that rank on Bing are the things that rank on Google. Clear titles, real content, a fast site, sensible internal links, and credible references from elsewhere. Do SEO properly once and Bing comes free.
Two things are worth ten minutes each. Submit your sitemap through Bing Webmaster Tools, which is free and confirms Bing can crawl you. And keep your business listings accurate, since Bing pulls local results from its own index rather than Google, which makes local SEO the one place Bing genuinely needs separate attention.
The exception worth taking seriously is B2B. If you sell to people who use a work laptop all day, a tenth of your addressable search market may be on Bing by default, and paid search there is usually cheaper. That is a PPC decision rather than an SEO one.
How do you get cited in AI answers at all?
This is the question people mean when they ask about Bing AI, and it applies to Copilot, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews alike. There is no trick, but there is a pattern.
- Answer the question in the first two sentences. Systems that extract answers take the part that reads like an answer. Burying it under three paragraphs of throat clearing costs you the citation.
- Use headings that are questions. They match how people actually ask, and they give a machine an obvious block to lift.
- Be specific. Numbers, names, and dates get quoted. Vague claims about leveraging synergies do not.
- Be somewhere else too. These systems lean heavily on third party corroboration, so reviews, directory listings, and mentions on sites you do not own carry real weight.
None of that is Bing specific, which is exactly the point. Build a page that answers a real question clearly and you become quotable everywhere at once, on a well built WordPress site that loads quickly enough to be crawled properly in the first place.
Conclusion
Bing is worth ten minutes of your attention and not much more, unless you sell to businesses. Submit your sitemap through Bing Webmaster Tools, keep your local listings accurate, and then go back to doing the work that serves every search engine at once.
The bigger lesson from the last three years is worth holding onto. AI answers were supposed to reshuffle search, and the market barely moved, because defaults and habit beat features. If you want to be found, the answer is still to be genuinely worth finding. That is what our digital marketing work is built around, and if you want a look at where your site currently stands, get in touch.
