Note: By submitting this form, you agree to Third Door Media's terms. We respect your privacy.

Bing: Poor Grammar & Typos May Result In Lower Search Rankings

Barry Schwartz on February 21, 2014 at 7:45 am

Duane Forrester from Bing wrote a blog post on the Bing Webmaster Blog suggesting that Bing’s search ranking algorithms do in fact consider poor grammar, typos and poor language to be part of their ranking factors.

Duane said, “just as you’re judging others’ writing, so the engines judge yours.” Meaning, Bing does look at how a page of content is written. If the page has typos, grammar issues and so forth, to the extent that it might stop a reader from reading on – then it might also negatively hurt your rankings in Bing. Duane wrote:

If you [as a human] struggle to get past typos, why would an engine show a page of content with errors higher in the rankings when other pages of error free content exist to serve the searcher?

Duane added that the search engines “over time we begin to see patterns.” If those patterns show poor grammar page after page, day after day, then it might have a stronger negative impact on rankings.

Google On Grammar & Rankings

This is contrast to Google is a different story, at least from what we’ve covered. Yes, Google’s Panda algorithm is about having quality content. But is quality the same thing as not having typos? It is unclear with Google at least.

In October 2011, Matt Cutts said while there is a correlation between spelling and PageRank, the core algorithm currently (back in 2011) does not use grammar as a “direct signal.” Google’s Matt Cutts added earlier this month that poor grammar in comments also does not negatively hurt your rankings in Google.

It seems Bing is taking a stronger stance on grammar and typos compared to Google’s stance.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.