What is Bing Generative Search and what does it mean for SEO?

With the official launch of Google AI Overviews (formerly known as Search Generative Experience) earlier this year, generative AI search experiences have been a hot topic lately. But did you know that Microsoft has launched its own generative AI search for Bing?

While Bing’s AI chatbot, Copilot, has already been live for over a year, the new generative search experience integrated that AI technology more directly into search results pages. This has left many marketers wondering what’s next for search engine optimization (SEO).

If you are one of those marketers, don’t worry, we have some answers.

What is the Bing Generative Search Experience?

Bing Generative Search is a feature that Bing first launched in July 2024. It closely resembles AI overviews in Google Search, i.e. it displays AI-generated answers to search queries at the top of search results, appearing above traditional rankings.

Bing Generative Search vs. Google AI Overviews

You may be wondering how Bing’s AI search features compare to Google’s. When it comes to the answers themselves, there isn’t much of a distinction. Instead, the biggest difference lies in the scope.

Google’s AI overviews appear consistently in a box at the top of search results, and the rest of the page is dedicated to traditional rankings. That’s it. But at Bing, the plan seems to be for AI to completely dominate search results. You’ll see what we mean below.

Of course, Bing’s AI is still being implemented at the time of writing so it’s impossible to say how the two will compare when all is said and done.

How to use Bing Generative Search

Right now, there are three different ways to access generative search features on Bing. The first is to simply search for a keyword as you normally would. Depending on what you’re searching for, you might see an AI answer somewhere in the search results. Unlike Google, however, on Bing they’re not clearly labeled, so you’ll need to know what to look for.

The second method is to perform a normal search and then click the “Deep search” button to the right of the search bar. This will usually add some AI answers to the search results if there aren’t any already.

Remember that generative search is still being implemented, so neither of these two methods (so far) will give you a search results page where AI takes full priority.

This brings us to the third method. If you want to get a glimpse of what the full AI experience will eventually look like, you can simply search for the keyword “Bing Generative Search.”

At the top of the search results, you should see a few sample queries that you can click on to see what the generative search answer is for each of them. This approach will bypass all traditional search rankings and focus solely on providing a list of AI-generated answers.

How does Bing AI search impact SEO?

Needless to say, these Microsoft AI search features have a significant impact on SEO. But what is that impact?

First and foremost, it could become harder for your business to get its content to rank on Bing. As AI-generated answers take precedence, fewer people may bother to click on links to other websites. That naturally poses a significant challenge.

Of course, it’s worth noting that this is only true for Bing. Most people use Google, which hasn’t (yet) allowed AI to dominate search results as thoroughly as Bing has. So it’s not like this will destroy SEO across the web. But it definitely makes things more challenging on Bing, specifically.

That said, there is still a way to take advantage of generative search. Namely, you can optimize your content to appear in AI answers. After all, those answers typically still provide links to their sources, so if your site is one of those sources, people will be more likely to see and visit it.

How to optimize your content for Microsoft’s AI-powered search feature

To optimize your website content for Bing Generative Search, there are a few tips you’ll want to follow. Those tips include:

• Taking into account search intent
• Optimize for featured snippets
• Optimize for voice search

Read on to learn more about each of them.

1. Take into account search intent

You probably already know about the importance of search intent for SEO. If you don’t, search intent refers to the reason why users search for a particular keyword. You want to make sure your content addresses search intent so that users will actually click on it and benefit from it.

And search intent isn’t limited to traditional SEO. It’s equally important when you’re optimizing for generative search — maybe even more so. AI is more effective than traditional search algorithms at judging whether a piece of content matches the search intent of a given term, so it’s even more important to optimize for it.

2. Optimize for featured snippets

Another way to help your content appear in AI answers is to optimize for featured snippets. If you’re not familiar, featured snippets are where Bing (or Google) provides a direct answer to a query at the top of the page, usually in the form of a paragraph pulled from a specific page (which is also linked to).

As it happens, the tactics required to optimize for featured snippets can also help you appear in AI results. What are those tactics? The main one is that when you target a search query that takes the form of a question, you should directly address that question on the page with a dedicated header. You should then answer the question with a short paragraph below that header.

3. Optimize for voice search

Finally, you should optimize your content for voice search. As with featured snippets, this is a type of optimization you could do anyway, but it’s also useful for appearing in AI search answers.

That’s because when people search by voice, they tend to ask full questions rather than short phrases. The same pattern occurs when people use AI tools, as those tools are inherently more conversational than traditional search.

That means that by optimizing for question-based keywords and creating content that answers those questions, you’ll have a better chance of appearing in Bing’s generative search experience.