When Bing launched its new search engine, I immediately signed up to be on the waitlist. Last week I was granted early access. Here are my first impressions: 

Getting started requires a little work

Bing requires you to use Edge (that's a browser for my fellow Mac users who are like what's that?). If you're using a Windows computer, you probably have it already, but Mac users likely need to download and install it.

Be prepared for distracting visuals

Compared to Google, I found the Bing home screen to be a little shocking. The homepage included headlines of today's top stories and all sorts of clickbait. With its high-contrasting colors, and dozens of widgets and headlines, I found the home screen to be quite distracting. I realized a long time ago I'm not the average person that designers are trying to please, so maybe this works for the average consumer, but not me. You are officially forewarned.

Bing digs deep for search results

When I entered a basic search about my own company, Respage, I did not expect a blast from the past. The results pulled in information primarily from third-party sites, which included a logo that is at least two versions out of date, and graphics from a presentation that's at least 10 years old. Yikes.

Bing has maps, too

I was really pleased to see one of our SEO clients appear in Bing Maps when I searched for "best apartments in Philadelphia" but equally surprised how many communities were missing compared to Google Maps. 

Click 'Chat' to get to the good stuff

Finally, when I clicked the Chat menu, a ChatGPT-powered prompt appeared and asked who I was. I added, "Philadelphia" after my name in hopes to narrow the search (the curse of a common name) but it still produced results for an actress who lives in Dallas. After a few more attempts led me to, "Ellen Thompson entrepreneur," which resulted in an accurate (albeit short1) search result.

Bing ChatGPT takeaways for multifamily marketers

1. Old content may rise to the top

Remember 10-15 years ago they warned us that what you put on the internet stays forever? They weren't wrong. My biggest takeaway from this Bing search experiment was a big reminder that what is written about you or your brand stays around for a very long time. Right now, ChatGPT seems to favor third-party sites, like ILS and social media, as opposed to your own website. Meaning you have less control over what content appears when someone searches for you.

2. Prioritizes ILSs

With that in mind, it doesn't look like the need for property websites and ILS listings will go away anytime soon. ChatGPT will provide summaries and links to learn more, and it appears to prioritize ILSs in search results even more heavily than Google. Which may make it easier for ILSs to drive traffic to its site when people search for your community.

3. SEO and reputation more important than ever

With a different algorithm and priorities, Bing Search and ChatGPT will put a greater emphasis on SEO, reputation management, and property chatbots. Many companies already utilize reputation management and SEO in their apartment marketing stack, but how they are executed is going to change drastically in the wake of Bing ChatGPT. At minimum, the change will require more effort to enrich the content on your property website, and focus on other web assets to put your best digital foot forward.

Some have speculated that this new technology may mean the end of website chatbots since this information will seemingly be available through search. However, while this technology is fun to experiment with, I don't expect the general search or chat responses to be reliable enough in the near future to provide prospects with accurate responses. And with uncertainty of what information Bing ChatGPT will pull from various sources, you'll probably want to have a multifamily chatbot that is fully integrated with real-time availability as a reliable source of truth for your prospects.

I highly recommend signing up for Bing's waitlist and seeing its chat feature for yourself. And if you have already tried it out, I'd love for you to reach out and tell me what you think.

1: I'm one of those parents who has tried to avoid posting information about my son's relationship to me, and not surprisingly, the most important detail about my life was omitted because it wasn't available online.