Bing recently started tagging results as “mobile-friendly,” allowing users to differentiate between non-optimized sites before they click. On the heels of Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm update, the Microsoft-owned search engine is making a continued effort to focus on mobile search.
In the next few months, Bing will soon make mobile-friendliness a signal in ranking; however, relevance will continue to trump mobile-optimization. This means that unlike Google, Bing won’t penalize sites.
To be considered mobile-friendly, Bing has four main requirements:
- Navigation, which refers to menus, buttons and links being large and spaced-out enough to accommodate touchscreen users. Links being too close together often results in accidental clicks.
- Readability, which is influenced by font size and viewpoint settings defined in HTML tags. The average user should be able to read text without zooming or scrolling laterally.
- Scrolling, which calls for the site to fit the device width in both portrait and landscape.
- Compatibility, which means that a user has to be able to open a website on a mobile device. Pages with flash content tend not work well on Apple devices, while many videos can’t be played because of plugin dependencies, copyright issues or distribution decisions.
Before the algorithm rolls out, Bing will be launching a tool comparable to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, which will allow advertisers to assess their own pages.