Mobile-friendly sites: Bing gets its own  update

Mobile-friendly update: Google sets the tone

It has not been very long since Google has rolled out its mobile-friendly update. It was not unexpected, but many website owners are still struggling to make their site mobile-friendly for mobile devices.

There have been many discussions over the course of the last month about how much sense it makes to make a website mobile-friendly. The most affected businesses were smaller ones. Compared to large firms, small businesses don't have as large of budgets for all the necessary search engine optimization measures.

Bing and its usability

Bing is very aware of the usability issues that mobile users encounter with websites. After less than 1 month since Google's mobile-friendly update, Bing has announced the rollout of its own mobile update on its blog.

Mobile-friendly innovations in Bing's search engine results

Just like Google did earlier, Bing has implemented a feature that allows users to see if a result is mobile-friendly or not, so they can better gauge whether or not they would like to continue going to that site.

As blogs.bing.com states, the mobile-friendliness of a site is not only a feature for mobile users, it is now a ranking factor in the results.

[...] "Based on data from user's interaction with Bing, we have seen that mobile users are able to satisfy their information needs much faster on searches that return more mobile-friendly results. With that in mind, we will be rolling out mobile-friendliness as a signal in ranking." [...]

It is important to note that the mobile-friendliness of a website is not an overly dominant ranking factor. What is more important is the relevancy of a website compared to what they entered into the search bar. If someone enters something into the search bar, they shouldn't wonder why the top results they got were not mobile-friendly. Bing and Google place a much higher importance on the relevancy of what you searched for rather than if a site is mobile-friendly or not.

BING:
[...] "While the changes will improve ranking for mobile-friendly pages, webpages that are highly relevant to the given query that is not yet mobile-friendly will not get penalized." [...]

GOOGLE:
[...] The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal -- so even if a page with high-quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query.  [...]

What are the more important factors for Bing with regards to being mobile-friendly?

Bing talks about the main factors that website owners should focus on in its blog:

1. Navigation - the menus, buttons, and links should be big enough and have a big enough gap in between them so that mobile users can easily navigate your website
2. Readability - the text on the website should be user-friendly and have a mobile-friendly font size so that the viewer doesn't have to zoom in to read (here is an example)
3. Only vertical scrolling desired - the pages on your website should ideally not need to be scrolled horizontally
4. Compatible with mobile devices - the content should function well on mobile devices. That means no Flash content and make sure that videos function on mobile devices.
5. Pop-ups will be addressed - Bing will evaluate your site to determine if any pop-ups hinder navigation on your site
6. Access to CSS and Scripts - the mobile Bing-Bots (mobile user agents) need access to all CSS and script files that are used for a website

When will Bing release its mobile-friendly update?

Up till now, we do not have an exact date as to when Bing's mobile update will go live. According to Bing, it could be ready as soon as next month. While we are waiting, Bing is working on a tool for website owners so they can check to see if their website is mobile-friendly. Until then, we can only keep an eye on it and stay up to date on matters.