We spotted this fresh format on Bing in late May 2026. It departs from the wide-link design you are used to. The test sitelinks are noticeably more compact: they run narrower, use a smaller typeface and are housed in a bordered container that distinguishes them from the rest of the ad copy.
Make no mistake, this is not a full-blown rollout. For now it is a limited test confined to certain queries and users. Tests like these tell you where the platform is going, and advertisers who pick up on that early tend to put their competition to shame. In our line of work, being an early adopter is rarely optional; it separates you from the pack when it comes to getting cheap clicks instead of expensive ones.
What is different?
Anyone who has run a Microsoft Advertising campaign for a while knows sitelinks are the extra clickable routes under your headline and description, giving a searcher a shortcut to your pricing or contact page.
The standard on Bing is usually a horizontal or stacked affair with plenty of padding and a font to match. Not so with the test version. Observers have noted three things.
For one, the width is down. They do not try to fill the ad frame so much as tuck themselves into a module. Then there is the font. It is smaller than the surrounding text, establishing a hierarchy. Let your headline do the shouting; the sitelinks are content to whisper. And finally, you will see borders. The links are in outlined boxes of their own, a clear break from the borderless look that currently lets them blend in.
You may call it cosmetic, but on a results page cosmetics dictate behavior. They determine where the eye and finger go.
Why is Bing tinkering with this?
A search engine does not change its ad elements without measuring the impact on revenue and CTRs. Part of it is likely about having an identity of its own. Google has been all over the place with new formats, from AI assets to visual feeds. A boxed, tight sitelink does not look like a Google clone, which gives Bing some mental real estate with the user.
It could be mobile optimization as well. With traffic on Bing rising, Microsoft is aware that narrow screens need a more disciplined approach. A tighter layout and smaller font can keep the sitelinks legible without shoving the main ad body off the screen.
There is also the matter of attention. When everything in an ad is vying for notice, nothing is heard. By boxing in the sitelinks, Bing keeps the focus on the headline while still providing the utility of the link. Some in the industry even think the bordered style is a move toward a more modular design – think of sitelinks as navigation boxes and callouts as badges – making the whole ad easier to scan.
Compared to the way things stand today, where sitelinks are just an open extension of the ad, the new version is more of a widget. It has its advantages; the border makes each link feel like a destination in its own right, something that might engender a little more trust from the searcher. There is a psychological barrier to an ad extension, but if a user is under the impression he is simply clicking a site menu, that goes away. In paid search you can think of trust as a currency; even a subtle change in how things are perceived will put conversion rates in motion.
Then there are the downsides. Smaller text is an inherent risk. Shrink the font too far and you lose readability on an older mobile or a high-res desktop. And should the sitelinks appear too detached from the ad, they will be passed over. You have to remember banner blindness sets in with searchers in a hurry; eye-tracking will tell you that anything resembling a boxed module is likely to be dismissed as decoration.
The border is something of a double-edged sword. It gives the thing structure, but structure has a way of looking like an ad. There is an irony in making an ad look more like one and having people skip it for it. I would put money on Bing’s testing team being right in the middle of quantifying that very trade-off with some hard statistics on dwell time and conversion paths.
What Advertisers Should Watch For
For those of you running Microsoft Advertising accounts, do not go and upend your sitelink strategy on the strength of a test. But stay alert. Here is what to have on your radar in the coming weeks.
Look at your sitelink CTR by device. When the new format makes its way out, you may find mobile CTR falling while desktop is unchanged; a sign the font is the problem. Or the reverse may be true and the compact layout is working. Do not be fooled by aggregate numbers, they have a way of lying. Segment your data.
Take a hard look at your sitelink text. With a smaller font you will want shorter strings. A 25-character label that was fine before could seem cramped in the new box. Why not trim it down to 15 or 20 characters and see if the copy has more punch? Write for a mobile app interface, not a desktop sidebar.
Your Quality Score and ad relevance are worth monitoring as well. Microsoft uses expected CTR to determine ad rank, so if the new design alters how people engage with your extensions it will show up in your cost per click and position. Multiply that across a few thousand impressions and a minor visual tweak can be quite costly.
And get in the habit of taking screenshots. When you come across the new format in the wild, document it. It helps you make sense of Bing’s logic on which queries are being tested and gives you something tangible to put in front of a client or your team when they wonder why the ads are not the same as last month. In our line of work, proof is better than speculation.
Preparing Your Campaigns for the Change
It is only a test, but a good advertiser does not wait until a platform change has run through his account to start optimizing.
Run an audit on your sitelinks. Make sure they are all pointing to something unique and relevant. If you have two sitelinks going to the same URL, get rid of one. Redundancy is a waste of space in any format, but in a narrow layout it looks particularly sloppy.
You might want to give your sitelink descriptions a refresh. We do not know yet if the test format will still put them under the link, but if it does, brevity will read better. “Free shipping on orders over $50” is much tighter than “We are proud to offer free shipping to our valued customers on all orders over $50.”
Do not neglect the landing page either. Bing puts a lot of weight on quality. If the new sitelinks are sending more traffic to an interior page, that page had better load quickly and deliver on the promise of the link. What is the point of a sitelink to your pricing page if it confuses the visitor once he gets there? Check your top destinations this week.
Remember, sitelinks are just one part of the portfolio when it comes to ad extensions. You don’t want the new format to diminish your visual impact, so be prepared for other extensions to do some of the heavy lifting. A well balanced mix of callouts, structured snippets and image assets will ensure you are not putting all your eggs in one basket when it comes to an ad’s performance. After all, diversification is as much a part of ad creative as it is of finance.
