Is Microsoft Bing Finally Figuring Out 301 Redirects?

Oct 30, 2009 - 9:09 am 2 by
Filed Under Bing Search

One thing I always see in the search optimization forums are complaints about how Microsoft Bing handles 301 redirects. I actually stopped covering the complaints because I saw them all too often. Today, I have some possible good news.

Steve, a senior member at WebmasterWorld posted a thread at WebmasterWorld that he believes Bing has finally figured out how to handle 301 redirects. He said:

MSN/Bing appears to have finally figured out how to follow 301 redirects, discarding the old URL and indexing/not-penalizing the destination URLs. This has lead to a lot more URLs from older authority domains coming into the index, and a pretty huge improvement in Bing's results, including ranking the best pages for a domain for a query instead of second and third choices.

If this continues I see it as a fix of one of the two main weaknesses of Bing compared to google (with the other being a smaller index of obscure stuff).

Finally, some very significant positive news from Bing... unless it all reverts again one of these days and all these 301 destination pages disappear again.

I have not seen any other reports of positive signs of Bing's 301 handling, but this is a good early sign.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 25, 2025

Mar 25, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profile Setup Stuck At Phone/Website Screen

Mar 25, 2025 - 7:51 am
Bing Ads

Bing Puts Ads Within Features Snippets Named You Might Also Like

Mar 25, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Google Local Service Ads Tests Removing Green Screened Checkmark

Mar 25, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

Google Promoting AI Mode With Banner Ad In Search Results

Mar 25, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google Ads

Google Merchant Center Click Reporting To Change Next Month

Mar 25, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google Pushes Fading Home Page Test To More, Adds Instructions