Bing's indexed pages vs pages appearing in results
-
Hi all
We're trying to increase our efforts in ranking for our keywords on Bing, and I'm discovering a few unexpected challenges. Namely, Bing is reporting 16000+ pages have been crawled... yet a site:mywebsite.com search on Bing shows less than 1000 results.
I'm aware that Duane Forrester has said they don't want to show everything, only the best. If that's the case, what factors must we consider most to encourage Bing's engine to display most if not all of the pages the crawl on my site?
I have a few ideas of what may be turning Bing off so to speak (some duplicate content issues, 301 redirects due to URL structure updates), but if there's something in particular we should monitor and/or check, please let us know. We'd like to prioritize
Thanks!
-
Yep, if Bing Webmaster Tools doesn't show problems with the sitemap, I'd focus on the points I highlighted back in mid-June on this thread (make content robust, unique, and make sure text is in HTML).
Good luck,
Kristina
-
Hello again Kristina
Bing's showing 38,885 pages indexed... and I've noticed the amount of pages vary after clicking through several pages.
So I guess the problem isn't why aren't they indexing, but rather why aren't they showing all pages. I'd assume this is related to page quality (content, on-page ranking factors, etc)?
-
I haven't heard of Bing keeping historically submitted sitemaps and confusing them, although I know that they're very picky about the number of inaccuracies they find in a sitemap, so it's possible they keep the latest one around so they can refer to it if the current one seems to have holes.
That said - when you search for your site, are the same pages coming up on the first page? What about the second? Third? The number of pages that come up when you search for site:mysite.com are approximations and can vary even as you scroll through the results pages. The more important question is, how many pages does Bing say are indexed in Bing Webmaster Tools?
-
Just an update:
Bing reported a successful crawl after submitting a new one, then rejected it based on an error that it didn't describe. Took it down, made a change to URL itself (somehow the .gz extension wasn't there) and resubmitted on 7/7/13.
Since then, Bing has reported a successful crawl, then reported a successful crawl on 6/30/13 (7 days before submission?), then reported a failed crawl on 7/5/13 (2 days before submission?) and now today again reporting a successful crawl on 7/7/13.
So my question now is... does Bing keep record of historically submitted sitemaps and confuse them with new submissions of the same ones? I've yet to see Bing actually index what's in the sitemaps, as a site: operator search is still a daily fluctuation between 1200 and 3300 results, sometimes going up to 4400. But again, this is daily. Right now, searching site:roadtrippers.com on Bing reports 4,420 results. Later today, I imagine it'll be around 3,300 or 1,200.
Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated.
-
Good luck!
If these tips don't work, you should follow up here again, but include a little more information about your site. It's possible that Bing IS crawling all of your pages properly, but something about them is making Bing think that they aren't valuable enough to be in their indexes. I'd particularly look to see if:
- Content seems to be duplicate, either within your site or if it's duplicated elsewhere
- Content is extremely thin (less than 100 words on a page/no unique text above the fold)
- Content is unreadable by Bing: check the cached version of a page that's not indexed and make sure you can read the unique content
Hope this helps! I'm going to mark this question as "answered," only because if you have a follow up question, it'll probably be more specific now that you have more information, and I'd like all of that info to be included in the original question.
Best,
Kristina
-
Hey Kristina
It has not unfortunately.
Bing reports successful crawls, however it's not crawling it - at all.
After reading more about Bing's sitemap preferences, there are a few things left to try. I'm using this post on Bing's forums http://www.bing.com/blogs/webmaster/f/12248/t/659635.aspx#9602607 as a reference for now. We're going to make a temporary separate sitemap for Bing to test what is suggested in that link. Hopefully something sticks and we can make some progress going forward!
Brandon
-
Hi Brandon,
Just wanted to check in - did using 1 sitemap work?
Kristina
-
I believe I've found the solution - as recently as 2009, Bing was only crawling one sitemap per website. It also said Bing would only crawl the most recently submitted sitemap but it doesn't appear that was the case for our site.
So I've since removed the old sitemap and am waiting to see some evidence of our new sitemap being crawled and indexed.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My site is showing indexed in search console but not appearing in Serps
hi, i have recently made sites.google site and submitted to search console but when I copy paste in google , its not appearing
Algorithm Updates | | alan-shultis0 -
What are the top tips for winning on Google, Bing, and Yahoo?
We just launched a new site that is starting to be indexed well in Google, but Bing and Yahoo are lagging a bit. I understand that the search engines are different algorithms and will take different lengths of time to index, rank, etc. What I'm curious about is are there any other tips / advice / things to keep in mind when trying to rank on the different search engines? Thanks!!
Algorithm Updates | | Emily_A0 -
Member's Badge as Link Building to Homepage or Internal Pages?
Providing members and embeddable badge is a well known link building tactic. Is it better to have the badges from hundreds or even thousands of members link back to the homepage of a website, or a lot of different inner pages? The inner pages would the their individual's profile which sits under a category (such as a service and organisation by location). Member's websites would be related to the content of the website generally. What are the advantages of each? 1. Links to homepage make it easier to rank for competitive keywords on the homepage? If the types of websites were to vary a lot, say a carpet cleaning website and a web designer website, if they all linked to the homepage, would it cause some confusion for the link profile?
Algorithm Updates | | designquotes0 -
Why some sites doesn't get ranked in Google but in Bing and Yahoo
Few of my sites e.g. Business-Training-Schools.com and Ultrasoundtechnicians.com doesnt get much visits from Google but these sites get top ranked in Bing and Yahoo. I have tried searching for answer to these question but i did not find anything convincing.
Algorithm Updates | | HQP2 -
Why is my domain URL ranking instead of individual pages?
Hello, Google is ranking my homepage for many keywords instead of showing the various sites pages? Any idea why? Thanks, David
Algorithm Updates | | DavidSpivac0 -
Where is Bing traffic?
According to http://mashable.com/2011/04/11/bing-search-growth/, Bing has almost half the market share compared to Google. Yet Bing organic traffic on my main site is exactly 2.8% of Google organic traffic. Is there some low-hanging fruit I am missing or do you guys have the same results as me?
Algorithm Updates | | metadata0 -
Very Strange Search Results!
Having just done a search on Google.co.uk for 'payday loans' I am baffled as to why the top two organic results (image attached) are even associated to the keyword. The KW isn't present in the title, metas, or content. Nor do any backlinks use relevant anchor text. I'm guessing this is an algorithmic 'f*ck up', do you agree? uGdk7Cw92Rme
Algorithm Updates | | Webpresence0 -
Test contet/pages indexed by search engines
During the web development stages of our Joomla CMS website, we have managed to get our site indexed for totally irrelevant test pages mainly to do with Joomla and some other equally irrelevant test content. How damaging is this to our domain from an SEO prospective and is there something we can do about it? When we do a site:domain.com search we see hundreds of testpages with test/irrelevant meta tags etc.
Algorithm Updates | | Fuad_YK0