Only Bing search on Windows 10/11 S

If you have purhased an inexpensive Windows computer it is likely to be running a version of Windows that is in S Mode. As such you will find that you will not be able to change the default search engine from Bing to Google.

Microsoft have ruffled a few feathers here.

At least bingbot is quite active. I see the spider in my webserver logs regularly. Those with new Windows 10 computers may not know how to switch to Google and many probably don't care!

My experiment with getting a page to rank highly on Google probably worked with Bing as well. The visits recorded on Google Analytics included these visits, the Impressions and Clicks recorded by Google Search Console would only be from Google searches.

How to change the search to Google

When you type a query/question into the address bar of your browser you will find that under Windows 10/11S that the search will be made using Bing. To change this to Google, or another search engine such as DuckDuckGo, then you need to switch your computer out of S-Mode.

Why I am seeing a lot of Bing searches

Having removed my page for the problems people seem to be having in running Zoom on a Windows computer with 10S I was still seeing a lot of "hits" on the page. This not surprising as the visitors where using such computers and they only had Bing as a search engine.

The effect on SEO

It is all very well being able to monitor and somewhat control how Google handles search and the indexing of your pages, but Bing will also be a "player" when it comes to getting visits.