Tech giant Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, has improved their spam filter, and your business may be affected.
What’s New
Bing’s spam filter change has targeted sites that keyword stuff their URL. Keyword stuffing URLs refers to when a site excessively repeats commonly searched words or phrases in the site link. URL, or uniform resource locator, refers to a website address, such as http://acs-web.com. One Bing-provided example of URL keyword stuffing is: http://loan.payday.paydayloanspaydayloansusa.com. This is clearly URL keyword stuffing that targets people searching for payday loans, which is already a spam-prone keyword considering Google launched a 2011 anti-spam algorithm, dubbed the “Payday Loan” algorithm.
Bing’s Sept. 9 webmaster blog post revealed the filter change, and stated that the filter began taking affect “a few months ago.” The filter change affected 3% of Bing searches. In comparison, Google’s major May 2014 Panda 4.0 algorithm, covered in depth in this ACS blog post, affected 12% of Google searches.
Although Bing’s URL keyword stuffing filter didn’t have as large an impact as Google Panda 4.0, the new Bing filter is still a significant change. Bing estimated that their new filter has affected about 5 million sites.
What the Filter Considers
Several factors influence Bing’s keyword stuffing URL filter. For example, Bing penalizes URLs whose domain name (or, the part of the URL after “http://” such as acs-web.com)repeats keywords. Bing’s example of this was: http://loan.payday.paydayloanspaydayloansusa.com.
Bing’s new filter also negatively affects URLs that use synonyms in attempt to exactly match searches. Bing’s example was:
- http://contososhoeswomen.shoesonsale.com/
- http://bestwomensrunningsneakers.shoesonsale.com/
- http://discountrunningapparelforwomen.shoesonsale.com/
Another way to be bumped down on Bing is if a URL uses common misspellings to deceive people in to visiting the misspelled site, instead of where the user intended to go. An example of this is ebey.com, a misspelling of popular eCommerce site ebay.com.
Bing detailed factors that may act as signals of URL keyword stuffing.
Site size is one influential sign. For example, if your site uses tactics similar to the above “shoesonsale.com” example, then your site may be artificially large.
Number of hosts also may be a red flag for Bing. For example, single sites with multiple hosts may be a sign of malicious spam.
Domain names with spammy phrasing also are penalized by Bing. Bing’s example of this is http://www.turbotaxonline2014.com. This is clearly deceptive spam because it utilizes a well-known product/company (Turbo Tax).
Bing also detects keyword-stuffed URLs by judging site content and social signals. Site content has arguably the greatest influence on your site’s position in search listings, and a site with strong social signals, such as having a strong social media following, is an indication of an established, quality organization.
How to Protect (or Improve) Your Ranking on Search
Industry studies report that between 81% to 97% of consumers use search in their purchasing process. Search engine optimization (SEO), an Internet marketing subcategory, gives your organization a distinct competitive advantage by making you easy to find across all search engines.
SEO’s undeniable value comes with a continuous need for improvement. Between Bing’s search updates and Google’s Panda and Pigeon changes, all occurring in under six months, staying competitive today requires competent, responsive SEO management. ACS offers SEO services to improve your online presence and thrive through all search engine changes.
Contact us today to make your business easier to find on Bing, Google and all other major search engines.