Ask ten practice owners about their Bing listing and nine will laugh. Who uses Bing? For a long time that reaction was fair. Bing has always been the search engine nobody talks about, the one that came preloaded on a work computer and got replaced by Google within the hour. If you only had time for one listing, Google was the obvious and correct choice.
So why is a healthcare marketing agency writing a whole article telling you to go claim the thing everyone ignores? Because in 2026 the question stopped being "who uses Bing" and became "what reads from Bing." The answer to that second question is the reason this is worth your attention today, not someday.
The old reason to skip Bing was real
Let us be honest about the numbers before we make the case. Bing is still small. As of mid 2026 it holds somewhere around 13 to 14 percent of United States desktop search, per Statcounter data compiled by Backlinko, and far less on phones, where most patients actually search. Google sits above 85 percent. Nothing about that has flipped. If you measured Bing only by the people typing into Bing.com, it would still be an afterthought.
That is why "skip it" was good advice for years. Your time is finite. A verified Google Business Profile, real reviews, and a fast website that books appointments will always matter more than a search engine with single digit phone share. None of that changes. What changes is that Bing is no longer just Bing.
What actually changed: Bing became the back end of AI search
Here is the part most owners have not connected yet. The AI assistants patients are starting to use to find a doctor do not have their own map of local businesses. They borrow one. And the one they borrow, over and over, is Bing's.
Microsoft Copilot is built directly on Bing's index. And ChatGPT, when it searches the live web, retrieves results through Bing as well, with OpenAI layering its own crawler on top. So when a patient opens an AI tool and types "find a good dermatologist near me" or "who treats TMJ in Tampa," the names, addresses and phone numbers that assistant pulls from are shaped in part by what Bing knows. A practice Bing cannot see clearly is a practice the AI struggles to describe correctly.
This stops being abstract the moment you look at how many patients have actually started doing this. A survey from patient experience firm rater8, reported by TechTarget, found that the share of patients using AI to find a new provider jumped from 31 percent at the end of 2025 to 47 percent by the middle of 2026. Nearly half. In six months. That is not a trend for later. That is now.
We have written before about how patients are starting to find and book care through ChatGPT, and how AI answers are eating into plain Google listings. Claiming your Bing Places listing is one of the small, concrete moves that feeds the machine the correct version of your practice instead of a guess.
What Bing Places actually is, and how fast it goes
Bing Places for Business is Microsoft's free local listing, the Bing cousin of your Google Business Profile. It holds the same basics: your name, address, phone, hours, categories, website and photos. For a patient browsing Bing, it powers the little map and info box that shows when they search your practice or your service.
The good news is you almost certainly do not have to build it from scratch. When you go to bingplaces.com, Bing offers to import everything directly from your existing Google Business Profile in a one click pull. It grabs your name, address, phone, hours, categories and photos, and if your Google profile is already verified, Bing often grants instant verification instead of mailing you a postcard. You review the imported details, fix anything off, and publish. Start to finish, it is usually under fifteen minutes.
The ten minute version
Go to bingplaces.com, sign in with a Microsoft account, and choose "Import from Google Business Profile." Confirm the name, address and phone match exactly what you use everywhere else. Add your top category, a few real photos of the office and team, and publish. If you have more than one location, you can import them in bulk. That is the whole job.
The honest version: do not expect a flood
We are not going to tell you Bing will fill your schedule. It will not. If you claim this listing expecting a wave of new patients from Bing.com, you will be disappointed, and we would rather you hear that from us now.
The value is subtler and more defensive than that, and it comes in two parts. First, there is still a real slice of people who search on Bing, often older patients on Windows desktops, and in healthcare the older patient is frequently the one with the appointment and the insurance. Being invisible to them costs nothing to fix. Second, and more important going forward, your Bing listing is one more place where your business facts are stated correctly. Every consistent listing lowers the odds that an AI assistant, a map, or a voice search repeats a disconnected phone number or a five year old address to someone who was ready to call.
That consistency is the real game. Search engines and AI tools trust a business whose name, address and phone match everywhere they look. When one directory says Suite 200 and another says Suite 210, that mismatch makes you look less trustworthy and gives the AI room to hand a patient the wrong detail. Bing Places is simply one more spot to get your story straight, for free.
One catch worth naming
A listing only goes so far. When an AI tool answers a real question about your practice, "do they treat teens," "is parking free," "do they take my plan," it does not read that off a map pin. It reads it off your website, if your website is fast and clear enough to be read at all. The listing helps the assistant find you. Your site is what it quotes. A page that is slow, thin, or written in dense clinical jargon gives the AI nothing good to repeat.
That is why claiming Bing Places is step one of a bigger idea, not the whole thing. The practices winning in AI search are the ones with accurate listings pointing at a website built to be read by both patients and machines, with plain answers to the questions people actually ask. One without the other leaves money on the table.
Where EtherealMinds fits
EtherealMinds works only with healthcare practices in the United States, and keeping your practice visible as search turns into AI search is a core part of our healthcare SEO work. That means we handle the unglamorous plumbing: claiming and syncing your Bing Places and Google listings, keeping your name, address and phone identical across the web, and making sure the AI tools patients now trust are reading the right version of your practice.
And because a listing is only as useful as where it points, we build the fast, clear website that both patients and AI assistants can actually understand, with the answers to real patient questions written in plain language. The goal is simple: when someone searches for you on Google, on Bing, or inside an AI chat, they find a practice that looks real, current and easy to book, every time.
Want to show up where patients are actually searching?
Book a free strategy call. We will check how your practice currently appears across Google, Bing and the AI tools patients use, find the gaps costing you new appointments, and tell you honestly what is worth fixing first.
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