Mobile browsing is becoming more popular with every passing day. Many of us browse the web from our mobile devices on-the-go, and even the companies and websites are making their websites mobile-friendly. Microsoft’s Bing search has seen a slight increase in the desktop search ranking, but the company is also trying to improve the service from mobile users as well.
Bing search now highlights mobile friendly websites on mobile devices to help the users save their time, and find mobile optimized websites. A “Mobile-friendly” tag appears right next to the search result to differentiate it from other websites, and having a mobile-friendly website will also help the website rank higher than other websites. However, it doesn’t mean that other search results more relevant to your query will be penalized, you will be shown the results which is most relevant to your search query.
Microsoft says,
“Our approach to mobile friendliness as a ranking signal balances the need to improve the ranking for mobile-friendly pages, with the continued focus on delivering the most relevant results for a given query. This means that for mobile searches on Bing, you can always expect to see the most relevant results for a search query ranked higher, even if some of them are not mobile-friendly.”
The company even listed a number of factors to consider your website as mobile-friendly, and help in improving your listing:
- Navigation: The menus, buttons and links on the page should be large enough and spaced well apart to aid touch-based navigation.
- Readability: The text on the website should be readable without the need of zooming in.
- Scrolling: The content on the device width should fit within the width of the device. Vertical scrolling is acceptable but the horizontal one should is not acceptable if the website wants to rank as “mobile-friendly.”
- Compatibility: The content needs to be compatible with the device.
This definitely will improve the browsing experience for mobile users, and improve Bing as a search engine.
