Bing Announces Mobile Ranking Techniques and Factors for a Better Mobile Search Experience

Bing recently released a new update that guarantees users a more mobile-friendly experience on smartphones and other mobile devices.

Mir Rosenberg, Bing Mobile Relevance Team’s Principal Program Manager, made the announcement via a blog post. “We have a long and exciting journey ahead of us, but as a very first step in this long-term investment, we started probing web pages for “mobile friendliness” and ranking web pages accordingly on our users’ mobile phones,” she wrote.

To help smartphone users browse the web better, Bing’s latest update places mobile-friendly results higher in the rankings for such users. [See Figure 1]

Figure 1 (Source: Bing)

Prior to the update, users would have gone through a series of results not knowing whether they would land on a mobile-friendly page or would have to wait to be redirected to a mobile responsive one.

Bing also revealed various mobile ranking techniques and factors which they consider when ranking mobile search results. Among these is mobile-friendliness in general—with factors such as compatibility and readability of content, as well as mobile functionality, added to the mix. Bing offers these pages to viewers by ranking them based on the abovementioned aspects, and returning more mobile-responsive URLs to the mobile SERPs.

Rosenberg added that webmasters can do their own share of catering to mobile users. She encourages site owners to “use responsive designs over separate mobile (m.*) sites and ensure a great experience for users on all devices and avoid compatibility, readability, and functionality issues.”

comScore expects the number of mobile web users to surpass desktop web users this year. Taking this into consideration, Google initially dealt with non-mobile pages by launching a service that alerts smartphone users of non-mobile-friendly pages. Just last week, the search engine giant began adding a “mobile-friendly” label to results, leading users to pages that load properly on mobile devices.

Bing followed suit by introducing its latest mobile-friendliness initiative. As per Bing’s announcement, users can expect more enhancements towards mobile relevance in the near future.

What other updates do you want Bing to integrate into its mobile-friendliness initiative? Share your thoughts in the Comments below.

About
Latest Posts

Marketing Digest Writing Team

The Marketing Digest Writing Team provides the content you need to keep you well-informed on the latest developments and trends in the digital marketing industry.