Bing, also called Microsoft Bing, is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. It replaced Live Search in 2009 and gives search results for web, image, video and map queries. In September 2026 it held 5.29% of worldwide search, behind Google, according to StatCounter.
History of Bing
Creator: Microsoft (announced by CEO Steve Ballmer, 2009). Year: 2009.
Microsoft launched MSN Search in the third quarter of 1998.2 It used search results from Inktomi at first. Microsoft began a beta of its own web crawler for MSN Search in November 2004. The crawler came out of beta in February 2005. In 2006 the service was replaced by Windows Live Search, which had a final release on September 11, 2006.
On March 21, 2007, Microsoft renamed the service Live Search. Steve Ballmer announced the change from Live Search to Bing on May 28, 2009, at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego. The official release followed on June 3, 2009. Bing offered search suggestions and a list of related searches, which it called the Explore pane.
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a ten-year deal. Bing replaced the Yahoo! search engine, while Yahoo! kept the user interface and 88% of the revenue from search ads on its site. The transition for all Yahoo! Search customers was complete by early 2012.
Microsoft deployed Bingbot in October 2010 to build the index. In 2016 Microsoft made the BitFunnel indexing algorithm and parts of Bing open source.3
On February 7, 2023, Microsoft began an overhaul called the new Bing. It added a chatbot based on OpenAI's GPT-4, first called Bing Chat. On November 15, 2023, Microsoft announced that Bing Chat would merge into Microsoft Copilot, which Wikipedia describes as a chatbot released in 2023.
Changelog and latest update
In 2016 Microsoft made parts of the search engine open source. In 2023 Microsoft added a chatbot, first called Bing Chat. In late 2023 it merged into Microsoft Copilot.
StatCounter reports Bing at 5.29% of worldwide search engine market share in September 2026. Google had 89.94% in the same month. The same StatCounter page lists Yahoo! at 1.36%, Yandex at 1.3% and DuckDuckGo at 0.74%. The page is titled for September 2026.
The official Bing blog lists product changes. They are from 2025 and 2026. Entries include Copilot Search in Bing on April 4, 2025. Bing Video Creator came on June 2, 2025. Bing Places for Business came on October 3, 2025. The June 16, 2026 post refers to the AI Performance Report. Microsoft introduced it earlier in 2026.
Latest update: AI Visibility Insights in Bing Webmaster Tools, 2026-06-16
On June 16, 2026 Microsoft announced four preview features in Bing Webmaster Tools. They are Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare. Intents groups the queries behind AI citations. It sorts them into groups such as Informational and Commercial. The features extend the AI Performance Report. The tool introduced that report earlier in 2026.
Usage examples
Site owners use Bing through three parts: the robots.txt file, which sets rules for the Bingbot crawler, search operators that test which pages Bing lists, and the server log that shows Bingbot visits. Bing Webmaster Tools reports on the crawl and the index. The three examples below change no site. They show a crawl rule, a search and a log count.
User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /admin/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xmlThis robots.txt rule tells Bingbot not to fetch pages in the /admin/ folder. The user agent name bingbot matches the crawler token. The Sitemap line gives Bing the address of the sitemap, so the crawler can find the pages of the site. The file goes in the root folder of the domain.
site:example.com
bing.com/search?q=site%3Aexample.comThe site: operator limits a Bing search to one domain. The first line shows the query, and the second line shows the same query as a search address, with the colon encoded as %3A. A site owner uses the results to check which pages Bing has listed.
grep -c "bingbot/2.0" access.log
grep "bingbot/2.0" access.log \
| awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -cThe first command counts the log lines that carry the bingbot/2.0 user agent. The second command lists the client addresses with their visit counts. Wikipedia gives this user agent string as the typical one for Bingbot. A user agent is set by the client, so a match shows the declared name only.
References
These sources are outside Websnoogie and were checked on 2026-10-12.
Bing (search engine)
Wikipedia
The encyclopedia article on Microsoft Bing. It covers the history from MSN Search in 1998 through Windows Live Search and Live Search to the 2009 launch of Bing. It also covers the Yahoo! deal, the 2023 AI features and the market share figures, with citations.
Bing Blog: Search
Microsoft
The official Bing blog section for search product news. It lists posts by date, from April 2025 through June 2026. Its entries describe the product changes that Microsoft announces, such as new features in Bing and in Bing Webmaster Tools.
New AI Visibility Insights in Bing Webmaster Tools
Microsoft Bing Blog
The official post dated June 16, 2026, which announces the preview of Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare in Bing Webmaster Tools. It describes how the AI Performance Report classifies the grounding queries. It is the primary source for the latest update in this entry.
Bingbot
Wikipedia
The encyclopedia article on Bingbot, the web crawler that Microsoft deployed in October 2010 to build the Bing index. It gives the typical user agent string, the bingbot identifier and the use of robots.txt to block the crawler. It cites the sources for each claim.
Microsoft Copilot
Wikipedia
The encyclopedia article on Microsoft Copilot, the chatbot that Microsoft released in 2023 under the name Bing Chat. It explains that the Bing Chat feature became part of Copilot and that the model is built on the GPT-4 model from OpenAI.
Bing reads the same page you publish
We do not promise a top spot on Bing or on any other search engine. No honest company can, because the search engine decides the order. What we do instead is build each page so Bing can read it clearly: a title, a description, headings in order and a contact page that a crawler can reach.
Websnoogie has spent over two decades building sites. Over that time we learned that one clean page helps on every search engine. We do not build a separate site for Bing. One well-made site serves Bing, Google and the rest, and it keeps your business details the same wherever they appear. Websnoogie, LLC is not affiliated with Microsoft.
The price for a new site is $300, paid once, and it covers up to five pages plus a contact page. We build it, check it on a phone and make sure the business name, address and phone number match on every page.
Our phone line is open every day from 7 am to 10 pm. Call 402-813-4034 to ask how your site reads to Bing, or start with the $300 website below.
