Bing Joins Google With Mobile-Friendly Ranking

Recent statistics show Google at about 75% of United States search engine usage with Bing at 12.5%, leaving Yahoo at 10% and others fighting for the leftover scraps.

In order to evolve their search engine results and best serve their visitors, Bing has decided to join the mobile-friendly push and include the mobility of a website as a ranking factor.

In their blog [read it here], Bing points out the key factors that they deem important when deciding if a website is mobile friendly or not.

Navigation – Not only should the menu not spill off the side of the page, but buttons and links should be large enough to see and tap on. Links or buttons that are too small or too close to each other and cause unintentional clicks are a no-no.

Readability – Being able to read the text on a small screen without the use of zooming and scrolling is key to being mobile-friendly.

Scrolling – Basically, the idea is that the user can scroll up and down but should never need to scroll side to side.

Compatibility – Using functionality like Flash or other plug-ins that don’t work on all mobile devices to provide content will negatively affect a website’s mobile-friendliness. Apple devices don’t allow Flash, so if you want your site to be mobile friendly, you shouldn’t use Flash either.

These are the basic items that Bing will use as it rolls out it’s algorithm to determine mobile friendliness over the next couple of months. Bing has also stated that they will be releasing a tool for webmasters to test their websites and as soon as that comes out, we will let you know.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, we would be happy to talk with you – just send us an email or give us a call.