Bing search results gain site name and favicons

Bing Search is looking a lot more like Google Search and you can now report issues with site names to Google.

Chat with SearchBot

Bing is adding site names and favicons to its search results in some cases, much like Google did months ago on desktop and last year on mobile search. Now when you look at the Bing search results, you may see little favicons at the top left of the search result snippets, with the site’s name above it, some have noticed and we are able to replicate at Search Engine Land.

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of Bing showing the site name and favicon for this site:

Bing Sitename Favicon

Here is what it looks like without it in Bing search:

Bing Without Sitename Favicon

Let’s compare that to how it looks in Google search:

Google Site Name Favicon

Controlling site names with Google. Google explained that Google Search uses a number of ways to identify the site name for search results last fall. But if you want, you can use structured data on your home page to communicate to Google what your site’s name should be. Google has specific documentation on this new Site name structured data available over here.

I do wonder if this works the same way for Bing Search?

Site name issues with Google. Google has had some issues with showing the correct site name in Google Search, so much so the CMO of Salesforce called it “extremely damaging to our brand.” Google has since opened a form for you to report issues with your site name in Google Search:

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1649039424561246210

Why we care. Site names and favicons can impact your click-through rate from the search results. If you can control what the site name says and how the favicon appears in the Bing and Google search results, it can be helpful for your brand and traffic. But if they show the wrong information, like “Sales force” with a space, it can be hurtful to the brand.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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