Search engine

Google handles the large majority of searches in most countries. If you ship in English or globally, start there.

Bing matters, and it also powers Microsoft Copilot, Yahoo and part of DuckDuckGo answers. If your users sit on Windows or Edge, include it.

Yandex, Baidu, Naver and Seznam lead in their home markets. Target them when you serve users in those countries and languages.

AI answer engines such as ChatGPT search and Perplexity retrieve from an index and write an answer with citations. They are not classic blue links, but they still need to find and trust your pages.

Each engine runs its own crawler and builds its own index. Your page is discovered, rendered and stored separately by each one.

• Crawl: a bot fetches URLs it knows about, follows links and sitemaps, and retrieves resources.
• Index: the engine renders the page, extracts text, links, media and structured data, and stores them.
• Rank and answer: for a query, it picks documents, orders them and shows results and features like sitelinks or images.

AI answer engines also retrieve, then generate text that cites sources. Visibility there depends on being crawled, relevant and quotable.

Use Search Console for Google. It shows queries, pages, impressions, clicks and positions. It also reports crawling and indexation states.

Use Bing Webmaster Tools for Bing. Check performance and coverage there as well. Treat each as a separate source of truth.

• For a page like /pricing, watch impressions and clicks by query, for example “yourproduct pricing”.
• Track search appearance, for example images or sitelinks, to see how your result renders.
• Watch index coverage. Fix pages that are discovered but not indexed, or excluded by noindex.
• Check branded and non branded queries in the last 28 days to see what people actually search.

• Get crawled: link every key page from your navigation, add an XML sitemap and avoid orphan pages.
• Make pages clear: one topic per URL, a concise title under about 60 characters, and a meta description that matches the search intent.
• Answer search intent: if the query is “pricing”, the /pricing page should load fast and show plans above the fold.
• Ship technical basics: fast LCP under 2.5 seconds, stable CLS under 0.1, responsive layout and clean internal links.
• Use structured data where it helps, for example FAQ on /guides/getting-started if you truly answer common questions.
• For AI answer engines, write sentences that can be cited, name the thing clearly and provide sources or specs on the page.

Submit your site to both consoles and verify ownership. Check crawl stats, coverage and performance monthly. Fix what blocks discovery first.

• Thinking one index covers all. Each engine must find your page on its own.
• Blocking bots you need. robots.txt rules that stop Googlebot or Bingbot will remove you from their indexes.
• Thin pages. Ten weak posts on the same topic can split relevance and cause cannibalisation.
• Slow image heavy layouts. If images drive your result, compress and lazy load or you lose clicks.
• Ignoring AI answers. If your how to page is never cited, add clearer steps, facts and sourcing.