The Drop In Bing’s Organic Referrals Are Due To Their Search Encryption Roll Out

There was a report that came out last week that spoke of a significant drop in Bing organic search referrers that had webmasters a bit worried, if not pretty concerned.  Basically, it was found that a widespread drop in traffic was being reported from the Bing Organic Search Source.  Where had the traffic gone?  It was found that instead of going through as organic search, there had been a spike in Bing referrers coming from from referring sites.

There was finally word from a Bing spokesperson saying that this was caused by Bing’s gradual move to encrypt their searches.

Our move to encrypt search by default as reported here — and which is currently ongoing — combined with how search traffic is being identified has likely contributed to the issue becoming more noticeable in recent weeks.

And here’s the thing, when it comes to Google, they remove the keyword data, but they’re still passing that traffic came from search.  With Bing, they are removing the fact that the traffic came from organic search, in addition to removing keyword data.

More than likely, this could be just a consequence of Bing changing to HTTPS.

Original Source by Barry Schwartz