Bing seems to be rolling out site name and favicons to its search results, 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 start to 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:
Here is what it looks like without it in Bing search:
Let’s compare that to how it looks in Google search:
Controlling site names with Google. Google back in October explained that Google Search uses a number of ways to identify the site name for the search result. 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:
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.
