Why We Build for Bing, Not Google (And Why You Should Too)
Someone ran an experiment earlier this year. Two fresh domains. 2,000 AI-generated blog posts published across them. Four months of tracking.
Google quietly deindexed both sites. No warning, no manual action notice, no appeal process. Just flatlined traffic, overnight.
Microsoft Copilot kept citing them. Citations went up 17x after Google removed the sites from its index.
That split is the most important thing happening in search right now. And it’s why we build for Bing.
Google and Bing are playing different games now
For years, Google and Bing were the same race run on different-sized tracks. You optimised for one, you mostly got the other.
That’s done.
Google is tightening. Algorithmic deindexing with no warning, no human review, no path back. If their systems flag your content, you’re gone. AI search is already eating into traditional web traffic, and Google’s response has been to get stricter about what earns a spot at all.
Bing is moving in the opposite direction. It’s surfacing content in Copilot that Google won’t touch. Same content, two completely different outcomes.
These are no longer the same platform with a smaller market share. They’re different bets on what the web should look like.
Where Aussie customers are actually finding answers
The Otterly.ai experiment found that 69% of AI citations came from Microsoft Copilot. That’s not a surprise when you think about who’s using Windows.
Your plumber customer. Your local café owner. The accountant down the road. They’re on a Windows laptop with Edge as the default browser and Copilot sitting in the taskbar. Copilot is already the default AI assistant for most Australian small business customers, whether they know it or not.
Add Siri routing through Apple Intelligence to ChatGPT (which runs on Bing’s index), and you’ve got the two biggest AI answer engines in Australia both pulling from Microsoft’s data.
We have 40,763 Bing citations for SmallBizAI.au from June 2024 to July 2026. That’s not an accident. It’s what happens when you stop treating Bing as a consolation prize.
What “write for Google” gets you in 2026
Google’s algorithm rewards things it can measure: backlinks, domain authority, freshness, engagement signals. It’s a system built for a web that looks a certain way. When content doesn’t fit the pattern, it gets filtered out with no explanation.
Copilot rewards structure, specificity, and real answers. Clear headings. Named sources. Statements that can be checked.
The Otterly.ai data showed something counterintuitive: the AI slop sites got Bing citations. Clearly low-effort, clearly machine-generated content still got cited in Copilot. Quality sites got cited too, and they kept their Google rankings. AI content isn’t the problem. Lazy content is.
Optimise for the platform that punishes you, or build for the one that amplifies you. Given that Google can deindex you overnight with zero recourse, the choice is getting clearer.
What this means if you’re an Aussie small business
Stop chasing Google rankings as your primary success metric. Watch AI citations instead.
46% of AI search answers skip local businesses entirely. That gap closes when you write the way AI citation engines work: clear structure, real data, named sources, specific answers to specific questions.
If you’re a tradie or local business owner, the person asking Copilot “who fixes hot water systems in Parramatta” is your customer. That’s the query you want to answer. Most Australian businesses have stopped experimenting with AI content strategy, which means the ones who haven’t are picking up ground fast.
In practice: use real headings, cite actual sources, make specific claims. Write the way an expert explains something to a client, not the way someone chasing a keyword density does.
Two thousand blogs across two domains got deindexed by Google in four months. Copilot cited them anyway, and citations climbed as Google pulled back. That’s the data. Build accordingly.
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