Understanding Deep Links In Bing

Andrea Hamilton - November 18, 2014

I recently received an email from a client regarding their organic search results in Bing. They had discovered that a few links below their company listing were old and outdated. Within Bing, these sitelinks or “deep links” (as they are referred to by Bing) can be very helpful. As seen in the example below, the search result with deep links allows your listing to take up more “real estate” on the search engine results page, which helps present your business as more of an authority and visually pushes your competition lower on the page.

The purpose of these deep links is to drive visitors to deeper content within your website straight from the search engine. However, if the links appear to be outdated, a visitor may become confused or lose interest. My client’s question was simple – how do we fix this? Well, the great news is, this is something that can be corrected and it can be done easily.

Deep links are a part of organic search results and are selected through a Bing algorithm. While the engines usually do a good job of capturing good pages, in this instance, they’ve cached outdated links; and it’s important that we have the ability to correct this.

The only way to manage these links is from within Bing’s Webmaster Tools. If you don’t already have a Bing Webmaster Tools account, you can easily create one and follow the steps to verify your site. Bing has recently made changes to their Deep Link Tools to give webmasters more control over what deep links are shown in search results. Once your account is verified, you will have the ability to access Bing’s Deep Links Tools and either block a deep link or demote a link for the next 90 days. Just a reminder, all blocks expire after 90 days, so you’ll need to remember to login into your account and extend your blocks an additional 90 days.

In a few simple steps, you too can gain greater control over what deep links appear under your company’s website within Bing organic search results. Keep in mind, changes to deep links may not be immediately reflected in search results and it may take some time before you see the results of your changes.