Bing Changed - No More Rewards Points for Reading News?

[TrafGib]

As of this morning (03/20/20) I notice that the Bing.com homepage has a redesign and is no longer accumulating Microsoft Rewards points when the trending now news boxes are clicked for further reading. Previously, when you clicked on one of the many left-right scrolling photos for a new headline, you would receive "search on Bing" points and link over to the news page to read more on the subject.

As of today, clicking the photo no longer goes to the Bing new page, but instead links to an MSN.com news page where no rewards points are given. Not sure if this is an oversite in the redesign, or by intent. If by intent, I know where I will no longer be going to read my morning news.

[#2]

To be more specific, when on the Bing homepage, clicking on one of the Trending News photos did actually result in a Bing search for that topic in that you went to a Bing search results page that contained all the search hits relative to that topic. This made it REALLY great for seeing numerous news sources and differing opinions on the subject. Even better, since it was a Bing search, it counted as such in regard to accumulating Microsoft Rewards points.

As of this morning, when on the Bing homepage, clicking on one of the Trending News photos will instead take you to a single MSN.com news article. From my perspective, this is a HUGE error in redesign. If I wanted to read a single opinion on the topic from MSN, I would go to the MSN.com New page to start with. However, if I am on the Bing homepage, I am expecting to do a proper Bing search. More to the point, when I click on one of the Trending News topic photos, I am expecting to perform a Bing search on that topic wherein I receive the appropriate spectrum of search results.

Changing the Bing.com search page to instead be a proxy for the MSN.com News site is not something that I am even slightly interested in. Again, if I had any interest in reading MSN news I would go to the MSN website directly. Really bad change in design from my perspective.

[#3]

And today, we are back to normal behavior. Quite sure this post drove a fix! 

[#4]

Hi @TrafGib 

are you referring to these that appear at the bottom of Bing.com ?

they go to Bing news for me, don't open MSN website

[#5]

Yes, I was. However, in my follow up 03/21 post I reported that things had shifted back to previous behavior. Really odd one day thing.

[#6]

@TrafGib Thanks for updating the post with your journey! I'm glad to hear that this was resolved rather quickly. If this happens in the future please submit feedback by clicking on the Feedback link on the bottom of your Bing Page. 

Alyxandria (she/her)
Community Manager - Bing Insiders