I was asked if there was a Bing Search algorithm and ranking update on February 1st. Truth is, I did not see any chatter about this in any of the channels I track. But some are saying they saw an update on February 1st and 7th. I asked Frédéric Dubut from Bing and he said Bing is always making changes.
The Bing forums at WebmasterWorld is pretty quiet, there is one thread that mentions something back in October and then in January but still, nothing much.
Here are some tweets with people saying they saw ranking changes for their sites or client sites in February:
Anybody else seeing big changes in Bing traffic starting Feb 1st?@hellemans, @davidiwanow, @dawnieando, @rustybrick
— Jarno van Driel (@JarnoVanDriel) February 25, 2020
Yeah, found some but haven't investigated further. You noticed anything @glenngabe ?
— Arnout Hellemans (@hellemans) February 25, 2020
Client stats I'm seeing indicate flux on the 1st and 7th, so at least seems to partially fit. Any thoughts on what happened?
— Jarno van Driel (@JarnoVanDriel) February 25, 2020
On a couple of client sites that have a demo that swings towards older people I've seen some traffic spikes from Bing, others have continued as normal. Not seeing any sudden drops.
— Lee Macklin (@macklin_lee) February 25, 2020
I'm seeing a site that's growing on Google and DuckDuckGo suddenly be obliterated in Bing search (where it was stable for more than 5 years) pic.twitter.com/aVfI1Kc73u
— Jarno van Driel (@JarnoVanDriel) February 25, 2020
Same. This is the non-brand generic Google growth of this site in the past year and the same happened with Bing pic.twitter.com/XoDEeSEgcv
— Dawn Anderson (@dawnieando) February 25, 2020
Here is a tool named SERPMetrics that tracks Bing specific search ranking fluctuations. It shows a big spike on February 7, 2020:
Frédéric Dubut from Bing said on Twitter "We make changes to the core ranking model all the time, some bigger than others." He also said maybe if we care, Bing will talk more about bigger updates. We care.
We make changes to the core ranking model all the time, some bigger than others. If there's enough interest maybe we can start blogging about these, although there's not always something actionable for webmasters (except writing great content that fulfills user intent 😆).
— Frédéric Dubut (@CoperniX) February 25, 2020
Did you notice changes with your Bing traffic earlier this month? Let us know.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
