In light of users' fear for their data's safety, Microsoft has announced that they have made strides to, and will now by default, encrypt Bing.
While not an entirely new concept, Bing had been offering encrypted search as an option for more than a year, this summer the search engine will begin to process of encrypting all search traffic by default. Moreover, while Bing states they will continue to pass along a referrer string so that marketers and webmasters can still identify traffic coming from Bing, they will no longer be including the used query terms.
With that said, Bing will still provide limited query term data through their various tools. Available through Bing Ads UI or the API, the Search Query Terms report will let webmasters see what queries triggered their ads and the metrics related to their ads like clicks and impressions, as well as Universal Event Tracking, provides enhanced performance metrics like duration per visit and total visits, and Bing Webmaster Tools.
"Microsoft has a long-history and deep commitment to helping protect our customers' data and the security of their systems," states the Bing blog post announcing the change. "While this change may impact marketers and webmasters, we believe that providing a more secure search experience for our users is important."
