WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOGLE, BING, YAHOO SEARCH ENGINES & SEARCH ENGINE KEYWORD RANKING TOOLS?

The face of business has changed radically over the past several years. Perhaps the most important driving force behind that change is the advent and proliferation of the internet. The internet has turned so many industries, business practices and methods of attracting customers on their side, making business owners everywhere reevaluate their strategies.

It is nearly impossible to do business anymore and not be on the internet; and if you are not on the internet, you are definitely losing customers. This is especially true for small businesses that depend on local business for their survival. According to the Pew Research Center, “Nearly two-thirds of Americans are now smartphone owners, and for many these devices are a key entry point to the online world 64% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, up from 35% in the spring of 2011.” What that means is that more and more people are looking for a local place to eat, buy clothing, hire a lawyer, etc. and they are not looking in the phone book–they are going online.

GOOGLE, BING, YAHOO- WHO, WHAT ,WHEN, WHERE, & WHY?

Google, Bing, Yahoo are the main three search engines that people use when browsing the web for pretty much anything. A large part of attracting customers to your website lies in your business’s place on the search results page; the closer you are to the top of the first page, the more traffic you receive. There are several different factors that go into those rankings, and they are based on algorithms developed by the search providers like Google and Bing (Yahoo search results are powered by Bing).

In order to get your website as close to the top of that first search results page as possible, it is important to know how Google and Bing rank their search results. Since Google is by far the biggest search engine, most businesses start there. Through varying marketing campaigns, market research, and especially SEO, a business can do several things to improve their rankings in the Google search results. However, just because you rank on the first page of Google doesn’t mean you will rank the same (or at all) on Yahoo or Bing. This can be pretty frustrating, especially considering the limited resources and time that most businesses have. So the big question becomes “Why do Google and Bing rank things differently?”

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN USING GOOGLE, BING OR YAHOO SEARCH ENGINES?

What is different is a hard question to answer, but for an amazingly simple reason. While we know several factors that each search engine uses in page rank, there are many more factors that we do not. The algorithms employed by Google and Bing are proprietary, and they will only share small pieces. While Google and Bing’s algorithms certainly share factors, those factors are also weighted differently. Each search engine also penalizes businesses for certain things that they consider to be unethical or “Black Hat” SEO; that means anything that is trying to “trick” the algorithm or customers.

Those are just two factors that could potentially have an adverse effect on your page rank. A few other factors are things like the loading speed of your website, whether it is mobile friendly, and of course links leading to and from your site. According to the website Web Presence, there are a few other factors that go into page rank. Google, for example, focuses a lot of attention on specific parts of a website, and weighs other aspects less.  Webpresence states: “Bing considers the whole array of SEO methods, rather than focusing on some more than others. With Google it’s largely about inbound links, but Bing isn’t quite as obsessed with these. Google doesn’t really pay much attention to things like <H1> tags, whereas Bing does give these extra weight. Basically, in order to optimize for Bing, use every technique in the book, from meta descriptions and titles to H1 tags.”

GOOGLE, BING OR YAHOO, WHICH SEARCH ENGINE TO START WITH?

So where should you try to rank first, on Google or Bing? Most SEO professionals will say Google, and that makes sense since they are the biggest, and so much of SEO is focused on ranking well on Google. So, Google is a great place to start, but that does not mean that you should not try to rank on Bing as well. Different people prefer different search engines, and you want to make sure that reach as many potential customers as possible; so, don’t write off any potential customers by focusing only on one search engine.

Try to find out how your customers find you: how are they going online, and which search engine do they typically use? Have a professional look at your website and optimize it to improve its rankings. Consult an SEO professional to assist you in key word link building as links are an especially important part of ranking well on Google. Most of all, be patient and stick with it because while ranking well on any search engine is important, it does take time.

Getting Started Checklist

If you are new to Bing Webmaster Tools, this checklist can help get you started. Steps 1 and 2 will get you up and running, while steps 3 and 4 are optional, but highly recommended.

Step 1: Open a Bing Webmaster Tools account

You can open a free Bing Webmaster Tools account by going to the Bing Webmaster Tools sign-in or sign-up page. You can sign up using Microsoft, Google or Facebook account. Alternatively, you can also create a Microsoft account as part of your Webmaster Tools sign-up process, just select Microsoft as the convenient account and click on Create one in the next step.

Step 2: Add & Verify your website

Once you have a Bing Webmaster Tools account, you can add sites to your account. You can do so by entering the URL of your site into the Add a Site input box and clicking Add. Next, we would like to verify that you are the owner of the website. There are three ownership verification methods. Click the option best suited for your site and follow the on-screen instructions:

• Option 1: XML file authentication: click BingSiteAuth.xml to save the an XML file to your computer. This file contains your personal verification code. Next, upload the file to the root folder of the site you are trying to add.
• Option 2: Meta tag authentication: Copy the displayed <meta> tag with your personal verification code to the clipboard. Then open your registered site’s default page (the home page) in your web development environment editor and paste the provided code at the end of the <head> section. Lastly, save and upload the revised default page containing the new <meta> tag to your site.
• Option 3: Add a CNAME record to DNS: This option requires access to your domain hosting account. Inside that account, edit the CNAME record to hold the provided verification code (a series of numbers and letters) we have provided you. When done ensure the information is saved.

After performing the necessary steps stated in the verification methods, please click Verify. If Bing Webmaster Tools is able to verify your site, you will see a green checkmark at the top and a message saying that your domain is verified. If you see a red cross mark, please look at the error message to check with issue with site verification. Please resolve the issue and try again later.

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS

Google Search Console is a free web service. This allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize website visibility, including the ability to:

• Submit and check a sitemap.
• Check and set the crawl rate, and view statistics about how Googlebot (Google’s webcrawler) accesses a particular site.
• Generate and check a robots.txt file.
• List internal and external pages that link to the site.
• Determine what keyword searches on Google led to the site being listed in the search engines results page, and the clickthrough rates of such listings.
• Set a preferred domain, which determines how the site URL is displayed in search engine results pages.

BING

Bing Webmaster Tools allows webmasters to add their websites to the Bing Index Crawler. The service also offers tools for webmasters to troubleshoot the crawling and indexing of their website, sitemap creation, submission and ping tools, website statistics, consolidation of content submission, and new content and community resources. Their tools include:

• Crawl issues allows webmasters to discover potential issues with their websites such as File Not Found (404) errors, blocked by REP, long dynamic URLs, and unsupported content-types.
• Backlink data allows webmasters to access data about their referring links.
• Advanced filtering.
• Data download allows webmasters to access the first 1000 results in a CSV file to analyze the results.
• Keyword search tool
• Robots.txt validator
• HTTP verifier
• Outbound links

YAHOO (DEPRECATED)

Yahoo Site Explorer was a service which allowed the viewing of information on websites in Yahoo!’s search index. Site Explorer has since been deprecated, having been merged into Bing Webmaster Tools.

Search Engine Keyword Ranking Tools

The keyword ranking tools listed below will save you a long search through the Internet. If you are a professional, you probably already have the tools. 

If you are a DIY entrepreneur, you search for great software or services to stay up to date with the latest website ranking strategies and tools. 

Beyond keyword ranking tools are resources for blogger outreach programs. I have included SEMRush as a resource to consider it an option in your marketing plan.

Keyword Ranking Tools and Resources:

Keyword Tracking Tools

• DYNO Mapper.
• SEO Profiler.
• SEMrush.
• Competitive Research and Keyword Research Gadget.
• Google Keyword Planner.
• WooRank.
• Ahrefs.
• Advanced Web Ranking.
• Ubersuggest