Bing Tests Removing Sitelinks From Top Search Result Snippets

Microsoft appears to be testing a Bing search results page with no sitelinks under the main result snippet. Search marketer Khushal Bherwani spotted the variant on October 19, 2026, and posted side-by-side screenshots on X. The same query returned sitelinks in one browser and none in another.

Bherwani said: "Bing is not showing sitelinks in this test, while they appear in the SERP without the test."

I replicated the split myself. One browser session showed sitelinks under the first organic result. The other, running the identical query, showed a bare snippet. That kind of inconsistency is the classic fingerprint of a controlled serving experiment, not a bug or a policy shift.

What are sitelinks, and why do they matter?

Sitelinks are the extra links Bing and Google append beneath a main result. They point to deeper pages on the same domain. For a big brand, that means a user can jump straight to "Pricing" or "Support" without a second click through the homepage.

They matter for two reasons. First, they enlarge the winning result visually — it occupies more of the page and pushes competitors further down. Second, they distribute clicks to interior pages that might never rank on their own.

Takeaway: sitelinks are free real estate for the top-ranking domain, and this test removes that real estate.

What exactly changed in the test?

Only the display layer, as far as the screenshots show. The first result's title, URL and description remain in place. What disappears is the row of sub-links underneath it. Bherwani captured both versions of the same SERP so the delta is easy to verify: same query, same top result, one with sitelinks, one without.

It's worth stressing what this is not. It is not a ranking change — the page still ranks first. It is not a confirmed product decision — Microsoft has said nothing publicly. It is a serving experiment visible to a subset of users, the kind search engines run constantly to measure how interface changes affect click behavior.

Takeaway: nothing about rankings moved; only what the top result looks like changed.

Confirmed versus speculative

Here's the split between what's solid and what's inference.

Confirmed, because it's directly observable:

• Bing serves at least two versions of the same results page for the same query.
• One version omits sitelinks under the first result.
• The test was visible on October 19, 2026.

Speculative, and clearly labeled as such:

• That this is deliberate A/B testing rather than a serving glitch. The reproducibility across users argues for a test, but only Microsoft knows for certain.
• Why Bing is running it. A cleaner, more compact page? A push toward richer snippets elsewhere? No statement exists either way.
• Whether the variant will ever roll out broadly. Most interface tests die quietly.

Takeaway: the observation is solid, the intent behind it is anyone's guess until Microsoft comments.

Who would feel the impact if this shipped?

If Bing ever removed sitelinks broadly, the effect would fall unevenly across site types. Brand-name queries would change most, because sitelinks appear overwhelmingly on navigational searches where one dominant site wins. Large multi-section sites — e-commerce stores, news publishers, software vendors — would lose direct links to category and product pages from position one.

Smaller sites and long-tail informational queries would barely notice. They rarely earn sitelinks in the first place, since the feature requires enough query-specific authority for Bing's system to select sub-pages.

There's also a competitive angle. Strip sitelinks from the top result and the rest of the page moves up. Competitors at positions two and three gain visual proximity to the top of the page, even though their rankings haven't budged.

Takeaway: this is a test about screen space, and screen space is zero-sum.

What to watch next

Monitor the Bing results for your head terms over the coming weeks. If sitelinks vanish across accounts, browsers and geographies simultaneously, that signals a rollout rather than a test. Check Bing Webmaster Tools chatter and Microsoft announcements for any official word. And if you track click distribution by landing page, watch whether interior-page visits from Bing dip during any window where the variant appears — that's the metric this experiment is almost certainly designed to move.