Bing updates

Bing announced the completely redesigned Bing Maps, adding new results cards for places. These cards allow multiple destinations in a single view and each card displays some relevant data, such as hours of operation, and similar businesses and services nearby. This update could have impact on local search rankings.

Bing rolled out search encryption, migrating to HTTPS. Following this, many site owners reported on significant drops in Bing organic search referrers.

Bing introduced local answers for mobile for restaurant-related searches. When clicked, the local answer would expand and show more detailed information, with Yelp review and social media data.

This spam filter was aimed at URL keyword stuffing. To detect this kind of spam, Bing bots will look at such signals, as site size, number of hosts, number of words in domain names and URL path, site’s quality and more.

Bing rolled out a huge structural update, which brought in the totally new design of the search engine, including improved functionality. Some of the most notable features introduced are Snapshot (the expanded data related to a person or place, quite similar to Google's Knowledge Graph); Page Zero (the autocomplete function); and Pole Position (top area on the results page with a detailed answer to the user's query).