Bing Begins Building Index Of Native App Content Through App Indexing

Bing is now building an index of app content from iOS, Android and Windows 10 apps. Soon they will begin showing relevant apps in their mobile search results.

Vincent Wehren, Bing’s Product Lead Webmaster & Publisher Experiences, posted on the Bing Search blog that Bing is now building up a “massive index of apps and app actions” in order to be able to surface content within native iOS, Android and Windows 10 apps within the Bing search results.

Vincent said, “we’ve already started analyzing the web specifically for App Links and actions markup to support the build up a massive index of apps and app actions, so the time start using app linking and schema.org actions and get an edge is now.”

Bing is asking webmasters to use the framework laid out at applinks.org to add the necessary markup and data so Bing can understand the content within your apps. The protocol supports markup for both iOS apps and Android apps. Bing said they are creating an app index that covers all of these platforms.

While Google is already recommending apps in search based on the content within the apps – they currently only support Android app indexing and not iOS or Windows apps.

Bing says they currently support iOS and Android, as well as Windows 10. So if you markup your content, Bing will begin indexing it. The app content currently won’t rank in Bing’s mobile search results but that will be coming in the near future.