Now Bing Announces Their Own Mobile-Friendly Algorithm — Another “Mobilegeddon”?

And here it is. Just as we suspected.

If you remember, last month we wrote a post hinting the possibility of Bing’s mobile-friendly algorithm update. There wasn’t any official announcement or suggestion from a credible source then, but now it’s official.

Just like Google’s infamous 21st April mobile update, Bing has also announced the introduction of their new mobile-friendly algorithm. However, unlike Google, Bing doesn’t have a specific date for us. Instead, Bing’s focus is more on “gradually rolling the update” so as to avoid any panic and unnecessary actions from webmasters that were definitely observed just before the Google’s latest mobile update.

The Balance between Relevance and Mobile-Friendly Websites

Unlike Google, Bing is going to take a slightly different approach to it’s mobile friendly update.

Although the algorithm update will target websites that are not mobile friendly, it will still focus on the “relevancy” of the search query.

According to Bing, relevancy is more important than mobile-compliance — at least at this stage.

This means that if your website is relevant to the search query, but it isn’t very mobile-friendly, that website will still be able to acquire the top search engine positions after the update. The vision behind this is that Bing wants to “strike the right balance” between relevant websites and mobile-friendly websites.

It Isn’t Going to be a “Mobilegeddon”

Bing is deliberately downplaying the possible impact of this update. As mentioned earlier, they don’t want to create any panic that was witnessed before the Google’s latest update. Furthermore, in order to make things simpler and easier for webmasters, Bing is also expected to publicly share important information about how many mobile-friendly pages are currently indexed and what kind of potential impact the update will have.

Keep an Eye Out for the Bing’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool
Just like Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool, Bing is also going to introduce a tool this summer that will test your website for the latest mobile-friendly standards.

According to Bing, this tool will help “webmasters to analyze web pages using our mobile friendliness classifier and help them understand the results.”

Bing’s tool is expected to work a lot like Google’s mobile friendly testing tool that will provide a simple “Yes” or “No” answer, based on your website’s mobile-compliance. Moreover, it will suggest specific ways to improve your website.

Final Words

As mentioned earlier, we do not have any specific date for this update yet. But  rest assure we will let you as soon as we know about it!

Till then, let’s keep working to make our websites more mobile friendly. It seems there is no living without it!