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Ben Woods
Europe EditorBen is a technology journalist with a specialism in mobile devices and a geeky love of mobile spectrum issues. Ben used to be a professional Ben is a technology journalist with a specialism in mobile devices and a geeky love of mobile spectrum issues. Ben used to be a professional online poker player. You can contact him via Twitter or on Google+.
It’s not news to anyone that mobile browsing – and by extension mobile search requests – have exploded in recent years. In recognition of that increase in mobile visitors, Microsoft is tweaking Bing’s algorithm to favor mobile sites higher than desktop-only counterparts when searching on a phone.
The move follows the recent introduction of ‘mobile-friendly’ tags in Bing’s search results, but doesn’t actually exclude non-mobile friendly sites from appearing in search results for relevant terms altogether.
Think of it more like favoring a high-ranking, mobile-friendly option over a high-ranking non-mobile site, rather than a low-ranking mobile site outranking the more appropriate desktop page. Microsoft said the changes would start rolling out “in the coming months.”
The algorithm tweak follows a similar move from Google recently, so if you’re wondering how to optimize things like navigation, readability, scrolling and device compatibility, check out the full post in the link below.