Google and Bing Put the Same Page at #1 for Only 16.5% of Searches

A marketing manager sees her company's service page sitting at #1 on Google for its most important search and reports the win. Nobody checks Bing, which answers the same question for the people using Microsoft Edge, Windows search and the other tools that draw on Bing's results. Five times in six, Bing is showing a different page first.

Google handles most searches, but Bing is not a rounding error for a business: it is the default engine on Windows computers and in Edge, and its results feed other search and AI tools. If a business assumes its Google ranking carries over, it has no idea what a large group of searchers sees first.

It rarely carries over. Google and Bing rank the same page first only 16.5% of the time. They agree on the website 35.1% of the time, so for 64.9% of searches the two engines hand the top spot to different companies altogether.

In September 2026 we collected the #1 organic result on Google and on Bing, US desktop, for 2,016 business keywords from industries including insurance, banking, plumbing, real estate and senior care, each with a #1 Bing result that matched the search, meaning its title contained at least one of the search's words.

Organic results are the regular listings, not ads. A search counts as the same page when both engines rank the identical web address first. It counts as the same website when the #1 results come from the same domain, such as two different pages on the same insurer's site.

For the other 83.5%, a searcher sees a different first result depending on which engine they use. The top position takes the largest share of clicks on any results page, so a page that wins it on one engine and not the other gets very different traffic from each.

The two engines build their rankings independently. They crawl the web separately, keep their own indexes and weigh signals such as links, content and freshness in their own way. The result is that two sets of rankings for the same words rarely line up, even when both engines find a relevant answer.

The same website holds the top spot on both engines for 35.1% of searches, about one in three. For the rest, a different company, publisher or directory takes first place on each engine. For a business, that means the competitor it sees above it on Google may not be the one it faces on Bing, and a website that never appears first on Google can own the top spot on Bing.

For 18.6% of searches, Google and Bing rank the same website first but choose a different page from it. That is more often than the engines agree on the exact page. A national insurer might rank its quote page first on Google and its product guide first on Bing for the same search.

For a business, this is the easiest gap to close. The engines already trust the website; they disagree about which page answers the search best. A page built clearly for one search, with the keyword in its title and heading and no rival page on the same site covering the same topic, gives both engines the same obvious choice.

Check your most valuable searches on Bing directly instead of assuming your Google rankings carry over. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, which is free, submit your sitemap there and look at which of your pages Bing ranks for your key terms. Where Bing ranks a different page from your site than Google does, merge or clearly separate the competing pages so one page owns each search.

Google still deserves most of the effort for most businesses, but a quarterly Bing check costs little and shows you a second set of competitors. An seo consultant can add Bing to your ranking reports so both engines are measured side by side.

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