While Google has opted for a separate mobile index, Bing is sticking to a device-agnostic approach – marking one of the biggest moves away from Google-alignment for the growing search engine.
In an interview with digital marketing agency Impression, James Murray of Bing has said that Bing will not be implementing a separate mobile index – even though Google is.
“Google’s decided that they want to have a separate mobile index and that’s important because they believe that the devices are separate and that’s important to them,” says Murray during the interview.
“At Bing at the moment, we haven’t taken that decision because we think it’s more useful to have an integrated view and to be more device agnostic, and so, regardless of what device you’re using, we want to give you the same index and then personalise to you as the user.”
When asked whether Bing would consider a separate voice index, Murray agreed it could happen, but again stated relevance as the key driver. Rather than a separate index, it’s more likely, he said, that Bing will make the decision at the point of search to say that a text or a voice answer is most relevant to the user at that time.
So what does this mean for digital marketers?
This idea of taking a device-agnostic approach is certainly interesting – and quite an exciting development in terms of Bing’s positioning alongside Google, as this is one of the first times Bing has taken such a clear departure from Google’s roadmap.
That said, as marketers, it doesn’t change too much. Whether you’re focused on Bing or Google, your main focus has always got to be on your end user. That’s why we invest so much in ensuring our website provide a great experience across all devices. By ensuring we do that, we’ll make it possible for either search engine to use our pages in their results, regardless of device or index.
Laura Hampton spoke to James Murray about a range of topics relevant to search and paid advertising – view all Bing Interviews here.
