Following in the footsteps of Google who recently implemented their own mobile-friendly algorithm, Bing announced that they too will add mobile friendliness as a ranking signal. If you remember Bing started showcasing mobile friendly badges in their search results a little while back – and according to yesterday’s post that was the start.

Now Bing makes it very clear that “while the changes will improve ranking for mobile-friendly pages, webpages that are highly relevant to the given query that are not yet mobile-friendly will not get penalized.

Currently to be considered as mobile-friendly your website will need to feature large and obvious navigation elements, including text formatted for small screens. You must have only vertical scrolling, and general mobile browser compatibility is also factored in. That being said Bing is working on a tool which will let you analyze your website using the Bing mobile friendliness classifier and is expected to be released within a few weeks.

For now I would say that any mobile optimization you did for Google would apply perfectly to Bing. However, much like with the Google mobile algorithm change, don’t rush out there and make a new responsive or mobile website for yourself just because of this. Bing has made it very clear that websites with relevant and high-quality content will not be penalized.

Published by Michael Boguslavskiy

Michael Boguslavskiy is a full-stack developer & online presence consultant based out of New York City. He's been offering freelance marketing & development services for over a decade. He currently manages Rapid Purple - and online webmaster resources center; and Media Explode - a full service marketing agency.

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