A Bing representative has dropped a strong hint to webmasters that the search engine takes click-through rates into account in its algorithm. Steve Tullis, the Senior Program Manager Lead for Bing, confirmed the factor’s importance in the rankings equation while at the SMX East US search engine industry conference at the start of October.
While the Bing representative wouldn’t give a firm statement, Tullis stated that search results that received low levels of clicks could expect to lose rankings.
Tullis stated that Bing was using click-through rate data to improve search results. Both Google and Bing are habitually close-mouthed about specific algorithm factors, with representatives usually unwilling to do more than suggest that a factor may be of some importance.
The admission is likely to boost the importance of certain website optimisation elements for site owners targeting Bing. Many SEO companies have long been pushing the importance of optimising title tags, description tags and other SERP-visible elements for search engine optimisation plans. The confirmation that Bing values click-throughs, only highlights this basic SEO area.
Tullis’s statement is not likely to come as a surprise to those in SEO careers, as click-through rates have long been factored in to most SEO equations for Google. There are many in the search engine optimisation field that take Bing into consideration in their plans these days, and a large number of site owners, from sites concentrating on local search such as Chester to more broad-ranging sites, are paying a little more attention now to the runner-up search engine.
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