The company behind Bing, Copilot and Azure — and the number-two search index that feeds several AI assistants.
Official siteMicrosoft is one of the largest technology companies in the world, spanning Windows, Office/Microsoft 365, the Azure cloud, GitHub, LinkedIn and the Bing search engine. For search and AI it matters more than its traffic share alone suggests.
Microsoft is a major investor in and commercial partner of OpenAI, and its Copilot assistant is built on that relationship. Because Copilot and several other tools draw on the Bing index, being visible in Bing is now a route to being cited by AI assistants — not just to Bing's own users.
Microsoft operates Bing and its webmaster tools, the Azure cloud platform, GitHub, LinkedIn and the Microsoft 365 suite. It also runs Microsoft Advertising, the ad network behind Bing search and its partner properties, which reuses much of the Google Ads campaign structure.
Bing's index feeds Copilot and other AI experiences, so Bing visibility and IndexNow submissions influence whether your pages show up in AI answers, not just classic search. Microsoft Advertising is also a lower-competition complement to Google Ads for many B2B and desktop-heavy audiences.
We verify sites in Bing Webmaster Tools, use IndexNow for fast indexing, and treat Bing coverage as a distinct signal for AI visibility. Where budget justifies it we run Microsoft Advertising alongside Google Ads, and for software projects we build and deploy on Azure.
Microsoft is one of the world's largest technology companies, and it matters to search and marketing through several channels: it owns Bing (the main alternative search engine to Google), LinkedIn (the dominant professional network and B2B advertising platform), and has made an aggressive, high-profile move into AI through its partnership with OpenAI, embedding AI (Copilot) across its products. As AI reshapes search and Bing feeds Microsoft Copilot's answers, Microsoft has become a more significant player in the discovery landscape than its search market share alone would suggest.
Bing, while far smaller than Google, still represents meaningful search volume, powers other surfaces, and — importantly — its index feeds Microsoft Copilot's AI answers, so Bing visibility has taken on new significance in the AI-search era. Bing Webmaster Tools is the equivalent of Search Console for Bing, and it supports IndexNow (a protocol for instantly notifying search engines of content changes). LinkedIn is central to B2B marketing and advertising, offering unmatched professional targeting. And Microsoft's deep OpenAI partnership means it is a major force in the AI tools reshaping how people search and work. For most SEO, Google remains the priority, but Microsoft's surfaces are a growing secondary consideration.
For most SEO work Google is the priority, but Microsoft's surfaces warrant attention as AI search grows: verifying a site in Bing Webmaster Tools and using IndexNow is low-effort and increasingly worthwhile given that Bing feeds Copilot, and B2B marketers cannot ignore LinkedIn for its professional targeting. The practical stance is to treat Bing optimisation as a light-touch complement to Google-focused SEO (much of what helps one helps the other), to consider LinkedIn where B2B audiences justify it, and to watch Microsoft's AI moves as part of the broader shift toward AI-mediated discovery that is reshaping the whole search landscape.
Part of our organizations knowledge graph — browse every entry in this branch.
The dominant search engine and the single biggest source of organic and paid demand for most businesses.
The AI lab behind ChatGPT and the GPT models — a major new surface where people discover brands and answers.
The non-profit behind Firefox and MDN Web Docs — a guardian of an open, standards-based web.
The shared vocabulary for structured data that search engines and AI use to understand your pages.
The frontend cloud behind Next.js — built for fast, edge-delivered sites and apps.
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