Grammar Matters, Atleast to Bing

I don’t want it to sound like I am picking on Bing with the post title of Grammar Matters, Atleast to Bing – fact is it should matter to all of us webmasters. After-all our jobs is to create and display online content in the best way possible for our visitors and grammar should play a large role in that. Regardless of what language you are creating content for – grammar is what turns things into paragraphs instead of run-on sentences. Grammar is what helps you emphasize exactly what you mean. Some of my very favorite grammar mistakes that I come across on a regular basis are: there, they’re, & their; and its & it’s. Then of-course you have the most common mistake of all: your & you’re. 

Duane Forrester from Bing strongly implied on the Bing Webmaster Blog that having poorly written content with poor grammar will have a negative impact on your search rankings within Bing. Let me actually quote:

If you [as a human] struggle to get past typos, why would an engine show a page of content with errors higher in the rankings when other pages of error free content exist to serve the searcher?

This might all seem a bit “down in the weeds”, but just as you’re judging others’ writing, so the engines judge yours. If you struggle to get past typos, why would an engine show a page of content with errors higher in the rankings when other pages of error free content exist to serve the searcher? Like it or not, we’re judged by the quality of the results we show. So we are constantly watching the quality of the content we see.

So what does this really mean? We’ve all had to read through something online that has made you stop half way through, get a glass of water and an Advil, and then attempt to decipher what the author was trying to say. Hopefully the days of playing online detective when reading someones blog are on their way out. Google doesn’t seem to care much, yet, – however they haven’t touched upon it in quiet a while.

Google’s Matt Cutts first mentioned grammar and spelling in an August 2011 video stating that as of yet the Google algorithm doesn’t take spelling and grammar into effect. Years went by until earlier this month (Feb. 2014) Matt Cutts once again mentioned grammar and spelling however this time in terms of your website/blog comments – and once again we were told to not worry about it.

Either way  – having poor grammar is going to create some upset users; and even worse it might push them completely away from your website. With that said – I’m happy Bing has created a focus on grammar and spelling mistakes.