Been using Bing as primary for nearly two years. No regrets... find what I'm looking for dang near every time. :)

I've had Bing set as my homepage for 2+ months now.

I can't say the search results have been perfect, as they haven't. Very average, in fact.

I have used ixquick and later startpage for at least 18 months (they claim to be the same SE but read on...).

A couple of months ago startpage switched to being a proxy for google so I switched (back) to ixquick, which quoted its meta sources (bing amongst them). Now ixquick has stopped quoting its metas ources and it's likely I will switch to someone else - shame because I got most of what I wanted from startpage/ixquick but I suspect ixquick may become a proxy for google as well.

I have recently begun using bing for more extensive searches (eg for things I cannot find extensivley on ixquick) and for research into my web sites' positions.

Since moving to startpage/ixquick I have not used google except for uploading one of my client's databases to google base (froogle) - another mess in the making.

My wife uses google sparingly for research into our sites' positions but that's about it.

We manage well as searchers without google whom, sad to say, we promoted actively in their early years.

Also sadly, our customers rely on google SERPS for at least part of their trade. It would be nice to add a suitable block in robots.txt but we can't do that for a while yet. :(

Bing? I have never been comfortable with MS OS, from DOS onwards, although until a couple of years ago I used Windows exclusivley. I am almost completely on linux desktop/[aptop now although my wife and our servers still use Windows (wife because that's what our customers are compatible with). My attitude to pre-Bing SE incarnations was similar to my attitude to Windows: very wary, mainly because of the company itself.

I now trust Bing FAR more than google but am still wary of committing too much to it outside of plain search.

If bingdude reads this - sorry, but it is a big step forward. :)

If it's not research related, I'm using Bing.

IMO, that is a rather important exception!

I use Bing/Yahoo for most initial searches. If I can't find what I'm looking for in 2-3 tries I switch to Google.

What I find way to often with Google/Bing/Yahoo is that I often get VERY old pages in the serps for TIME SENSITIVE stuff.

If I'm looking for a 2011 event, I really don't need a page from 2008, especially when that page ranks better than the page for the 2011 event.

That often happens even if I use a +2011 -2008 -2009 -2010, etc.

The problem there is probably due to the copyright data on the page. Many sites display the current year as copyright; some state the initial year of the site; and some display both. Of course, some display neither.

I would have thought SEs could tell a page's date from first-bot'ed date but the above seems more likely at the moment.

I'm going to say why. I can't with good conscious continue supporting something that has spanked me and my fellow webmasters. Harsh? Perhaps. I perhaps have spent more time reading Panda impact statements. I just don't like the result post Panda and I'm sick of seeing the same pattern of sites on the Google searches. It's getting really predictable!

I agree with you there. For my sites that got hit by Panda, I increased my usage of Bing and Yahoo search engine when working on those sites. I went one step further than you in response to Panda. For Pandarized sites, I removed Google Analytics, Adsense, and Google custom search. No sense giving them unfettered access to traffic information if they are not in my camp.

To stay on the SEO theme, I would suggest if you worked at SEO in Google, you need not change your game when going after Bing. I personally see (or should I say saw) results in Google that are mostly duplicated in Bing. If Google likes it, I would suggest Bing will like it. That may be pre Panda thinking, but I assuming that you aren't ripping your site to shreds in hopes of figuring out Panda and in the meanwhile completely undoing your Bing rankings. Most should hope for increased importance of Bing SEO.

I agree in general but not in details. There are significant difference in SEO implementation on migrating from Google to Bing. For example, I am in the process of rewriting Titles and Description meta tags. The character length on Bing/Yahoo SERP results are shorter than Google. The same thing goes for the URL. I will have to shorten it for new future pages.

I also have to spend more time telling Bing/Yahoo what is most important on the page. Google has an advantage in that area because I had Google Analytics, Adsense, and Google custom search properties on the pages which Google uses to see upstream and downstream traffic, where the visitors are clicking on the site, what they are interested in, etc. They have more information to work with to understand what the page is about and what the users are looking for, how long they stay on the page, etc. It was less work telling Google SE what to rank for on the page because they had more signals available to them.

It is better to use Bing for privacy reasons.

Bing is a bit better at privacy, but don't be fooled... they track users much the same way as Google, perhaps not as in depth... and coming in many years later... but NONE of the search engines these days are ignoring behavioral results.

HOWEVER, MS has a much longer history of actually honoring privacy (as far back as MS-DOS) so there is significant reason to HOPE they will continue in that vein.

Now ixquick has stopped quoting its metas sources

First off - thanks for sharing that site - I too seek alternatives to G.

In the ixquick search results when you hover over the stars at the end of the individual search result a tool tip style pop-up shows on what SE it found that particular result.

Tip('Found by Statesman (1), Yahoo (1), Gigablast (1), Blekko (2), EntireWeb (3)')

The above code is from one ixquick search I did. Does each SE citation's listed number signify the # of occurrences found? Nothing I found on the ixquick site conclusively backs up the above question.

@thirteen, great points on the SEO differences. Certainly to take into consideration.

I think for myself, based on traffic, my time to invest in Bing SEO isn't quite worth it just yet. I'm okay with decent results with zero time spent. Of course I'm hoping that the need to Bing optimize grows over the next while. That means growing users!

One should be growing users regardless of which engine... Stagnation otherwise...

Hoople - well spotted. Doesn't work for me because I use Firefox+NoScript so no javascript. :)

I don't know why people make these changes. More and more people are blocking javascript so why do web sites shift to it?

I've been using Bing for 95% of my searches for months now. I just don't like the direction Google is heading in so they are not first on my list any more.

I use them more, but I use Google on a certain browser. The good news is that Google doesn't track me since i use scr....e. And it's also encrypted and with zero ads. With Google is creepy since you are logged on maybe to check adsense, gmail, blogger or whatever so they know the exact name of the person that searched for a certain question.

SEO wise, I don't really know much since I haven't changed them for Google or Bing. I know that Bing, so far, does not use unproven and radical signals that cause your traffic to crash by 70% overnight.

There was a report in a UK newspaper today about yell.com becoming an official affilliate to bing. The report included a note that bing SERPS would now show more yellow pages results at the top of the listing.

I don't think that's a really good thing. Google places, anyone?

article analyzes the costs, to MSN / Bing, of their increasing "share":

businessinsider.com/microsoft-bing-losing-billions-2011-4

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Based on an analysis of Microsoft's financial statements, Bing is paying about 3X as much for every incremental search query as it generates in revenue from that query.

What does that mean?

It means that for every $1 Microsoft generates from each new search query it buys, it spends $3 to get it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Based on Bing's performance over the past decade, and especially over the past two years, we continue to think it's unlikely that Microsoft's online division will ever make money again.

We also have to believe that the $3 billion Microsoft is burning every year on Bing could be better spent trying to compete with Apple and Google's Android on tablets and phones (not to mention Macs and Chrome).

Why?

Because the stakes in the latter battle are very high.

^^
Since you're quoting the infamous Henry Blodget, MSFT is much smarter than him. They already have Android beaten, or maybe they don't want to beat it since it's going to make them $1Billion+ in profit each year.

Since Microsoft has the rights to several patents related to technology used in Android, it has been able to turn Android into a huge revenue generating business by entering into patent licensing agreements with other companies which produce Android devices. [3] Microsoft recently entered a patent licensing agreements with several manufacturers including HTC, General Dynamics, Wistron and Onkyo under which they will pay it $5-$10 for every Android device that they ship. With 500,000 devices a day, this implies around $1 billion in value if it received a $5 fee for each Android device. Current negotiations with Samsung, the top Android device manufacturer, could land Microsoft an additional $10-$15 for every Android device activated by Samsung. [4] [blogs.forbes.com...]
Both Google and MSFT buy traffic because people are used to "good enough results" and stay there. Like Google did with AOL or Myspace or Mozilla. Just Microsoft sucks at sucking dollars out of SERPS for now

I started using Google in 1999. I did so on the recommendation of fellow I.T. workers who'd heard about the service. It was only 2-3 years later that those clued-up, plugged-in 'reporters' and 'journalists' really started making Google's discovery their own. That's when 'Google' became a verb.

Back then, it was technical geeks that were the 'sneezers' - to use a Cutts-ism. It was the 'sneezers' that made Google mainstream (them, plus a great product).

Webmasters are the 'technical geeks' or 'sneezers' of the search industry. If you start telling your friends and family about all of the alternatives, of which now there are many, you can be sure that in a couple of years the journalists will catch on. Google will then have to compete on results, and not just habit.

Add me to the list of people switching almost entirely to Bing.

In factr, I have migrated away from all Google properties as much as I am able. I do sometimes use Google for obscure searches, but by in large I find Bing comparable and often better.

Yes using it a bit more

I get good traffic and a good living from Bing traffic, so I think it makes sence to do more busisness with them, so I have recently began to use bing for around 30% of my searches. No hasle good results.

Switched 4 PC's in our office to Bing homepage last August, 11 months ago. We still check Google results when we aren't satisfied, but that trend has slimmed to almost none now.

If I had to estimate, were 95-98% Bing now. The ONLY thing we really use Google for is gmail, which is also the ONLY thing we use the Chrome Browser for. All work is done in FF, behind the GoogleSharing add-in to work behind a proxy.

I know that Bing is using ME a lot more. All of the sites I own/manage have been pounded by Bing lately.

I know that Bing is using ME a lot more. All of the sites I own/manage have been pounded by Bing lately.

You can set the crawl rates for Bingbot yourself inside the Bing Webmaster Tools for your sites. Totally under your control.

You can set the crawl rates for Bingbot yourself inside the Bing Webmaster Tools for your sites.

Been there, done that, didn't get the T-shirt nor much in the way of change. Most sites show no change, while one site is only getting about 50% of the previous levels.

In Webmaster Tools, set the crawl rate to the minimum, but still being pounded with close to 100 page views over a 15-minute period from about 30 IPs (that's close to 100 PVs per IP, not total). The other sites are getting upwards of 300 PVs/IP over the same period.