A funky thing happened today on Bing. Depending on your location, it appears, Bing returned search results with either nearly all ads or the opposite, just organic results. All Paid With the exception of image search results and related search suggestions, the only results on a search for “jeans” were ads.  Below is a desktop […]

A funky thing happened today on Bing. Depending on your location, it appears, Bing returned search results with either nearly all ads or the opposite, just organic results.

All Paid

With the exception of image search results and related search suggestions, the only results on a search for “jeans” were ads.  Below is a desktop screenshot; the same results were seen on both tablet and smartphone as well.

A similar thing happened on a search for “running shoes” with just ads showing, but here instead of suggesting related searches Bing returned a “No results found” message.

All Organic

Both of the search results above happened on the East Coast. On the West Coast, during this period, editors saw either typical results or results with just organic listings. At the same time I was looking at the all-ads SERP for “jeans” on the East Coast, a search for “jeans” on the West Coast had no ads at all.

I can’t confirm if the divide was truly coastal, but that’s what we saw anecdotally across our team.

It’s not clear how long the issue lasted, but Bing fixed the glitch within an hour of us first spotting the issues. A Microsoft spokesperson told Search Engine Land, “Microsoft became aware of an issue earlier this morning causing some users to experience intermittent access to Bing. We took immediate action and restored access to the service.”