Search engine Bing has made changes to the way its mobile search engines optimisation process, which determines how the search engine finds, selects, ranks and displays pages.

The changes revolve around how Bing measures mobile compatibility in sites, with preference shown to responsive design over differing desktop and mobile sites. Responsive designs have no need for different URLs across desktop and mobile versions, and so dont split their ranking power across two addresses.

However, the Bing team did note they understand some sites want to retain different mobile and desktop sites. Discussing this, Lee Xiong, program manager for the Bing Crawl Team, said that “as true advocates for our users, we are very interested in understanding how your content renders on these devices and if it makes for a good user experience.

“To that end, we have started to probe websites with a number of new crawlers with the aim to give us the best representation of what our users can expect from your website when viewed on their favourite device.”

The new bots used by the team mimic popular mobile devices, including iPhones, as well as devices running Android and Windows, to emulate how sites will appear on various devices. This information is then used to rank the sites.

“Its no secret that mobile is pervasive and that performing well on mobile devices is becoming more and more important for websites to succeed,” said Xiong. “To safeguard the best mobile search experience for your users, move towards a responsive model that adapts to your users device at the same URL.”