Bing to Rewrite Title Tags, Meta Descriptions Using AI

On November 15, Bing announced ‘Generative AI Captions.’ Essentially that means that Bing is now using AI to create search snippets.

Bing says it will “enhance the user’s search journey and provide a more efficient browsing experience.“

Generative AI Captions will rewrite search snippets using GPT 4 (AI) to provide what Bing calls “highly relevant and easily digestible snippets.” Bing will use AI to analyze search queries and webpages to generate a custom snippet in the moment. Bing’s hope is that these “snippets” will help searchers “quickly grasp the the essence of the page’s content.”

“You’re In Control,” if You Want To Be

In the announcement, Bing assures us that website owners are in control. By that they mean, it will be turned on by default, but through the use of specific meta tags, you can tell Bing not to have Generative Captions created for your web pages.

This may be a bit of a frustrating announcement for companies that spent money having custom title tags and meta descriptions written professionally, but time will tell if these Bing’s AI search snippets will perform better than human editors. One assumes that any Bing will still use ranking influence from the page titles, but they said nothing about title tags and meta descriptions moving forward.

Use Bing Webmaster Tools to Evaluate Impact

If you’re not ready to take immediate action, or you want to see how Generative AI Captions will impact your website, you can use Bing Webmaster Tools to evaluate your click-thru-rate over time.

If you need assistance understanding how this change affects your website, contact me today.