Update: This is now confirmed by Microsoft, see below.
After a crazy December with Google updates, including both the Helpful Content Update and Link Spam Update, it seems Bing might have been holding off until 2023 for its own update. I received several reports of serious volatility with Bing rankings and traffic starting on January 18th into January 19th and I dug in a bit across sites. And yes, it does look like there was some type of algorithm update that heavily impacted some sites (across verticals).
Although most site owners focus on Google, there are still some sites receiving a lot of traffic from Bing. I know that might be hard to believe, but it’s true. I plan to dig in more soon, but for the sites I checked that surged or dropped, you can definitely see a distinct change in rankings and traffic across many queries starting on 1/18 with more volatility on 1/19. For example, for one site that dropped heavily, they used to rank in the top five for a number of queries, and many of those pages dropped to page two or beyond. Actually, I couldn’t even find the site for some of the queries anymore.
And for sites surging, I’m seeing some big jumps in rankings. For example, moving from page two and beyond to page one (and sometimes high on page one). And I can see impact across some international sites as well, so it does seem to be a global update. I’ve also heard from some people running sites outside the US that saw impact.
Here are some examples of surges and drops I’m seeing based on Bing Webmaster Tools data and GA data. Note, the update rolled into the weekend, so it will be clearer over the next few days for sites that were impacted:
And here is volatility picked up by SERPmetrics for Bing starting right around the update:
Also, a quick note that Bing doesn’t confirm algorithm updates like this (unlike Google which has been announcing major updates for quite some time now). That said, I will reach out to some people at Bing to see if they can comment on the volatility.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update from Barry Schwartz: At the Microsoft Bing AI event, Yusuf Mehdi confirmed this update saying at the 19:43 mark in the video, "But a few weeks ago, something special happened. We applied the AI model to our core search ranking engine and we saw the largest jump in relevance in two decades. We believe we can continue to drive breakthroughs as we improve the models."
He showed this chart:
Update from Glenn: It was awesome to receive confirmation from Bing about the algorithm update. Like I explained in January, there were some huge shifts I saw across sites starting on January 19, 2022. After receiving confirmation yesterday, I took a closer look at the sites that saw a lot of movement then. And yep, the impact is extremely clear. I have included updated screenshots below from Bing Webmaster Tools.
And here's a quick delta report based on a site that surged with the update (based on Bing Webmaster Tools data):
Check your stats: Again, if Bing organic search traffic is important for your business, then definitely check Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics today. You might be surprised with what you find. Some sites saw big shifts in rankings and traffic starting on January 19, 2022 when Bing applied the new AI model to its core search ranking engine.
