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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.
Duane wrote:
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.
It seems like Bing is judging your content based on your grammar.
Google, well, not so much. Google doesn't care if you have bad grammar in comments and said in 2011 grammar is not in ranking algorithm - yet.
But either way - having poor grammar may upset your users and push them away from your web site. Which can have a long term negative impact on your search traffic.
Forum discussion at Google+.
Comments:
Wallace
02/24/2014 01:38 pm
After a long time I read sometime related to bing search engine. Its a great achievement by Bing. They are focused on grammatical error free content. Please interact with seo professionals. SEO world is searching alternate to save seo industry. We donot want to use google and even want to recommend our clients not to use google. Very poor experience here.
Michael Martinez
02/24/2014 01:49 pm
Bing has always been pickier about what it will show to its visitors than Google.
Mohnesh Kohli
02/24/2014 02:26 pm
I think it is not good A person whose native language is not English make make some mistake that does not mean he has no knowledge of the niche on which he is writing.
10100111000111001010110
02/24/2014 03:21 pm
Barry, don't spread false information, looking for sensation. You read not what is written, but what you want to hear. I replied to this post on SEL already and can add here : I have thousands of UGC, written by people from Asia (not always perfect English). These pages are ranked so high on Bing for years, that sometimes I can't believe by myself ... higher than ultimate brands, like Amazon, etc ... If content is helpful, then grammar doesn't matter. P.S. It shows the lack of your real life experience.
Barry Schwartz
02/24/2014 03:22 pm
I linked to the source, I did not say it is what Bing is doing but what they are writing. Bad mood today?
10100111000111001010110
02/24/2014 03:28 pm
You interpreted words from source the way to make sensation. I replied to you on SEL already and I believe you read my reply. Do you want me to repeat it here ? P.S. How the mood can be good, when you spread false information? I do care about you )
Barry Schwartz
02/24/2014 03:31 pm
I disagree, I think I interpreted them correctly.
10100111000111001010110
02/24/2014 03:44 pm
"I interpreted" - and here is the problem. Reporter should not interpret. When you say "will have a negative impact on your search rankings within Bing", then you provide false information, because source doesn't say "will have a negative impact". It says - might have. "Will" and "Might" - see the difference. If you pretend to be a researcher (not reporter) with the ability to interpret, then you should dig deeper and analyze topic from all possible points of view. Not only from the point of view, that benefits your traffic. You simply don't do any good for your so beloved SEO community, providing such questionable interpretation of information. Don't you understand this?
Barry Schwartz
02/24/2014 03:45 pm
I don’t get why you still read my posts?
10100111000111001010110
02/24/2014 03:46 pm
How is this question related to the topic ??
Barry Schwartz
02/24/2014 03:46 pm
I am just curious.
10100111000111001010110
02/24/2014 03:50 pm
I respect your curiosity, but let's not flood here. This is serious topic, that might have serious impact on many market participants. Imagine small businesses decide to hire staff to check and correct possible grammar errors. Thousands of dollars will be wasted. Doesn't it bother you?
Barry Schwartz
02/24/2014 03:52 pm
I am not saying this is what Bing practices. I am saying this is the message Bing is giving. I don’t see how you are saying I am wrong. Bing is 100% saying, bad grammar is something their search engine cares about. Do they actual downgrade sites with bad grammar is a different story.
10100111000111001010110
02/24/2014 04:05 pm
According to your interpretation, Bing's algo reads the text and searches for grammar errors. Those, who don't understand how software/algo works (the majority of your audience) could believe, that this is possible. Many of them will probably decide to invest into grammar checking. This is not a problem, when the website has tens of pages. But if website has thousands of pages, then it will be pure waste. "will have a negative impact" (as you wrote in article) is not "cares about" (as you wrote in comments). Wrong interpretation, that could lead to absolutely real waste for small businesses.
Barry Schwartz
02/24/2014 04:06 pm
Now you are wrongly interpreting what I am saying. Bing is clearly saying they find it important. If they don’t today, hey - if they are saying it, they might put their words into actions soon. Or maybe not.
StevenLockey
02/24/2014 04:53 pm
I really wonder if this guy isn't posting from a mental institution.....
James
02/24/2014 05:14 pm
But it is a bad user experience .... I know English is not some bloggers' first language, but they need to improve if they are targetting English speakers.
Tian_Mian
02/24/2014 10:06 pm
Are we celebrating "Happy Wise Ass" today?
Ross Crawford
02/24/2014 10:58 pm
Now I gotsa use spellcheck?
10100111000111001010110
02/24/2014 11:11 pm
Well man, I can't even imagine what are you celebrating, keeping in mind that you are all about asses today ) In the neighbor thread you informed everyone, that you know what does your dog's crap know )) In this thread another ass takes your mind ... I don't know man ... I don't know ... http://www.youtube.com/embed/Oj3VphK9AMk
Littleman
02/25/2014 01:05 pm
can you change your avatar to sftu.com
barbua
02/25/2014 05:17 pm
it funny what search engines check the grammar. All utilities created for this purpose doing it wrong sometimes. So your writing is up to quality of bing and google algos (but we all know what lot of bugs inside these algorithms).
Robert Connor
02/25/2014 11:26 pm
Makes sense to us bad spelling bad search!
10100111000111001010110
02/27/2014 11:05 pm
Why algo will never be used to detect wrong grammar and will only see it indirectly : http://www.cbsnews.com/news/computerized-fake-research-papers-get-published/
Webmaster Sun
02/28/2014 04:53 am
I knew this :)
Daniel Delos
02/28/2014 08:22 pm
I think this is drawing an incorrect conclusion based possibly on how Google worked in 2011. I may be mistaken but I'm fairly certain that now Google does check for grammar in normal content and has been for the past year or so, but perhaps just not in comments. Lots of grammar mistakes naturally pop up in comments so this makes sense for this limited context but not for real site content. To put it differently, it would make little sense for Google to penalize a page because of some poorly written comments. In body content, the main time bad grammar happens is in poorly spun and/or cheap outsourced content. And I don't mean 1 or 2 small mistakes, I mean errors every 2 or 3 sentences. That's not something I see ranked that often in SERP results... The fact that I used to see this type of content ranked but don't much anymore is strong evidence IMO that they do rank based on grammar and other pseudo-semantic indicators/signals.
Wine Dine
03/05/2014 01:17 am
Good to know!