Like Google, Bing Will Also Favor Mobile Friendly Websites

Google recently rolled out a new algorithm to favor websites that are mobile friendly, it notified web masters in advance that this change will penalize websites that are not optimized for mobile devices. With smartphones and tablets contributing a major chunk to online traffic it makes sense why Google would want to ensure that the top results on its search engine for any given query lead to a mobile friendly website. Bing has decided to follow in its rival’s footsteps.

Bing recently started tagging search results as “Mobile-friendly,” it allows users to quickly see at a glance if the website they’re about to visit is optimized for their smartphone or tablet. Bing says it has received great feedback following this change in user experience and with that in mind it is rolling out mobile friendliness as a signal in ranking.

Since the idea is to always provide the best results for any given query, this algorithm change at Bing will improve ranking for mobile friendly pages, however webpages that are “highly relevant” to a particular query will not get penalized yet even if they’re not optimized for mobile devices.

Bing says that this is a fine balance and it took a few iterations to get it right, but Microsoft’s search engine believes that it’s closer to the goal now. Expect mobile friendliness ranking changes to start rolling out across Bing in the coming months.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: Bing (Microsoft), Google, Microsoft