Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Bing Indexation and handling of X-ROBOTS tag or AngularJS
-
Hi MozCommunity,
I have been tearing my hair out trying to figure out why BING wont index a test site we're running.
We're in the midst of upgrading one of our sites from archaic technology and infrastructure to a fully responsive version.
This new site is a fully AngularJS driven site. There's currently over 2 million pages and as we're developing the new site in the backend, we would like to test out the tech with Google and Bing.We're looking at a pre-render option to be able to create static HTML snapshots of the pages that we care about the most and will be available on the sitemap.xml.gz
However, with 3 completely static HTML control pages established, where we had a page with no robots metatag on the page, one with the robots NOINDEX metatag in the head section and one with a dynamic header (X-ROBOTS meta) on a third page with the NOINDEX directive as well. We expected the one without the meta tag to at least get indexed along with the homepage of the test site.
In addition to those 3 control pages, we had 3 pages where we had an internal search results page with the dynamic NOINDEX header. A listing page with no such header and the homepage with no such header.
With Google, the correct indexation occured with only 3 pages being indexed, being the homepage, the listing page and the control page without the metatag.
However, with BING, there's nothing. No page indexed at all. Not even the flat static HTML page without any robots directive.
I have a valid sitemap.xml file and a robots.txt directive open to all engines across all pages yet, nothing.
I used the fetch as Bingbot tool, the SEO analyzer Tool and the Preview Page Tool within Bing Webmaster Tools, and they all show a preview of the requested pages. Including the ones with the dynamic header asking it not to index those pages.
I'm stumped. I don't know what to do next to understand if BING can accurately process dynamic headers or AngularJS content.
Upon checking BWT, there's definitely been crawl activity since it marked against the XML sitemap as successful and put a 4 next to the number of crawled pages.
Still no result when running a site: command though. Google responded perfectly and understood exactly which pages to index and crawl.
Anyone else used dynamic headers or AngularJS that might be able to chime in perhaps with running similar tests?
Thanks in advance for your assistance....
-
Thank you for the update Kavit.
-
Hi Everett and Fellow Mozzers,
I have been away overseas so wasn't able to put up an update.
Eventually, managed to get a hold of someone at BING within the tech team who told me that the reason that they didn't index the pages was simply because of popularity.
It isn't enough to have unique content, design and structure on your site, it is also vital to have traffic, links and mentions as external signals.
We also got word that dynamic sites and pre-render content will be acceptable for BING so we're resting easier at night these days.
Development on the site continues as per schedule and we will be launching the proper site this year on a highly authoritative domain which should yield very different results to the test we put together.
Hopefully, this will help someone else who is on a similar pathway.
Everett, I would like to thank you again for taking the time to read, reply and help us with our analysis.
Thanks!
-
Hi Everett,
Thank you for the analysis and deeper insights.
I did make the changes to the test pages bar the design template.
We added the unique titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords.
We added completely unique content to all three pages with no other instances of this content appearing on the web at all.
The pages are now also interlinked and also linked from the top of the homepage so none of them are orphan pages.
sitemaps have been updated and resubmitted.
The latest version has been out a week so far, but no response from BING as yet.
Thanks,
Kavit.
-
Hello Kavit,
I would suggest putting unique Title tags, meta descriptions and content on those pages. They are very thin as it is, and all of the content is boilerplate.
There are 57,100,000 results on Bing for: "Search for an Australian Business, Government Department or Person" which is the content on the home page you shared.
There are 60,600 results on Bing for: ""There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it" which is the content on this page: http://wp-seospike-weblbl.naws-sensis.com.au/bing-seo-control/no-metatag.html .
And so on. I can see why Bing wouldn't want to add yet another thin, duplicate, orphan page to their index. My advice would be to build out those test pages with a design template and to put original content, title tags and meta descriptions on all of them. Then repeat your test.
-
Hi Everett,
Thank you for taking the time out to read and respond.
The URL we have setup for testing is: wp-seospike-weblbl.naws-sensis.com.au
We have 3 control pages (all flat HTML pages) that we setup and put online for bing to crawl:
http://wp-seospike-weblbl.naws-sensis.com.au/bing-seo-control/no-metatag.html - no robots metatag and allowed to crawl and index.
http://wp-seospike-weblbl.naws-sensis.com.au/bing-seo-control/metatag.html - page with a noindex metatag not to be crawled and indexed
http://wp-seospike-weblbl.naws-sensis.com.au/bing-seo-control/metatag-header.html - X-Robots meta tag NOINDEX
http://wp-seospike-weblbl.naws-sensis.com.au - homepage with no robots exclusion
Ideally, I expected the homepage and the no-metatag page to be indexed at least.
I am familiar with the builtvisible documentation that they've put out.
My main pain point is that even the flat HTML pages are getting ignored, so I can't even test the deeper AngularJS developed pages since my control group is not delivering results as it should.
a site command on the above domain on bing shows no results.
Thanks again!
-
Is there any chance of getting a URL for the domain in question?
Have you read this yet?
https://builtvisible.com/javascript-framework-seo/What are the URLs like that you're asking Bing to index? Which is closest?
Hashbang
http://www.IWishJSFramworkWebsitesWouldGoAway/#!Escaped Fragment
http://www.IWishJSFramworkWebsitesWouldGoAway/?escaped_fragment=Base URL using Angular's $location service to construct URLs without the #! via the HTML5 History API http://www.IWishJSFramworkWebsitesWouldGoAway/
I know this doesn't answer your question, but hopefully it will get the discussion started.
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
-
Questions about putting 2-3 keywords in title tag.
Hi there, what is the best way to decide the keywords to be used in title tag?
Web Design | | lucybish0 -
Have Your Thoughts Changed Regarding Canonical Tag Best Practice for Pagination? - Google Ignoring rel= Next/Prev Tagging
Hi there, We have a good-sized eCommerce client that is gearing up for a relaunch. At this point, the staging site follows the previous best practice for pagination (self-referencing canonical tags on each page; rel=next & prev tags referencing the last and next page within the category). Knowing that Google does not support rel=next/prev tags, does that change your thoughts for how to set up canonical tags within a paginated product category? We have some categories that have 500-600 products so creating and canonicalizing to a 'view all' page is not ideal for us. That leaves us with the following options (feel it is worth noting that we are leaving rel=next / prev tags in place): Leave canonical tags as-is, page 2 of the product category will have a canonical tag referencing ?page=2 URL Reference Page 1 of product category on all pages within the category series, page 2 of product category would have canonical tag referencing page 1 (/category/) - this is admittedly what I am leaning toward. Any and all thoughts are appreciated! If this were in relation to an existing website that is not experiencing indexing issues, I wouldn't worry about these. Given we are launching a new site, now is the time to make such a change. Thank you! Joe
Web Design | | Joe_Stoffel1 -
Any risks involved in removing a sub-domain from search index or completely taking down? Ranking impact?
Hi all, One of our sub-domains has thousands of indexed pages but traffic is very less and irrelevant. There are links between this sub-domain to other sub domains of ours. We are planning to take this subdomain completely. What happens if so? Google responds for this with a ranking change? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Problems preventing Wordpress attachment pages from being indexed and from being seen as duplicate content.
Hi According to a Moz Crawl, it looks like the Wordpress attachment pages from all image uploads are being indexed and seen as duplicate content..or..is it the Yoast sitemap causing it? I see 2 options in SEO Yoast: Redirect attachment URLs to parent post URL. Media...Meta Robots: noindex, follow I set it to (1) initially which didn't resolve the problem. Then I set it to option (2) so that all images won't be indexed but search engines would still associate those images with their relevant posts and pages. However, I understand what both of these options (1) and (2) mean, but because I chose option 2, will that mean all of the images on the website won't stand a chance of being indexed in search engines and Google Images etc? As far as duplicate content goes, search engines can get confused and there are 2 ways for search engines
Web Design | | SEOguy1
to reach the correct page content destination. But when eg Google makes the wrong choice a portion of traffic drops off (is lost hence errors) which then leaves the searcher frustrated, and this affects the seo and ranking of the site which worsens with time. My goal here is - I would like all of the web images to be indexed by Google, and for all of the image attachment pages to not be indexed at all (Moz shows the image attachment pages as duplicates and the referring site causing this is the sitemap url which Yoast creates) ; that sitemap url has been submitted to the search engines already and I will resubmit once I can resolve the attachment pages issues.. Please can you advise. Thanks.0 -
Lots of Listing Pages with Thin Content on Real Estate Web Site-Best to Set them to No-Index?
Greetings Moz Community: As a commercial real estate broker in Manhattan I run a web site with over 600 pages. Basically the pages are organized in the following categories: 1. Neighborhoods (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/midtown-manhattan) 25 PAGES Low bounce rate 2. Types of Space (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/loft-space)
Web Design | | Kingalan1
15 PAGES Low bounce rate. 3. Blog (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take
30 PAGES Medium/high bounce rate 4. Services (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/brokerage-services/relocate-to-new-office-space) High bounce rate
3 PAGES 5. About Us (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/about-us/what-we-do
4 PAGES High bounce rate 6. Listings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf)
300 PAGES High bounce rate (65%), thin content 7. Buildings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/928-broadway
300 PAGES Very high bounce rate (exceeding 75%) Most of the listing pages do not have more than 100 words. My SEO firm is advising me to set them "No-Index, Follow". They believe the thin content could be hurting me. Is this an acceptable strategy? I am concerned that when Google detects 300 pages set to "No-Follow" they could interpret this as the site seeking to hide something and penalize us. Also, the building pages have a low click thru rate. Would it make sense to set them to "No-Follow" as well? Basically, would it increase authority in Google's eyes if we set pages that have thin content and/or low click thru rates to "No-Follow"? Any harm in doing this for about half the pages on the site? I might add that while I don't suffer from any manual penalty volume has gone down substantially in the last month. We upgraded the site in early June and somehow 175 pages were submitted to Google that should not have been indexed. A removal request has been made for those pages. Prior to that we were hit by Panda in April 2012 with search volume dropping from about 7,000 per month to 3,000 per month. Volume had increased back to 4,500 by April this year only to start tanking again. It was down to 3,600 in June. About 30 toxic links were removed in late April and a disavow file was submitted with Google in late April for removal of links from 80 toxic domains. Thanks in advance for your responses!! Alan0 -
Other tags inside an H1 tag
So I have a situation with the website I'm currently redesigning where the H1 titles are supposed to mix colors per the current brand strategy. The branding crew is adamant that this has to be done so there is no use in saying "just don't do it". To accomplish this I'm wrapping the words that need to be the other color in a . Additionally, some pages have a "sub text" as part of the title, floated to the right and in a smaller font but with the same multi color treatment. I'm wondering if the sub text should be in an H2 and positioned to the right or if it would be beneficial to have the text in the H1 as well. An example of what I'm talking about would be something like this: "Big Shoes for Big Guys - Nike Shoes" In that, the "Big Shoes" and "Nike" would be one color and the "for Big Guys" and "Shoes" would be another. I can imagine having the "Nike Shoes" as part of the H1 would be a good idea in some respect but I'm not certain of that. In order to make that happen I can only think of one way to do it: -H1-
Web Design | | EscaladeSports
Big Shoes
-span- for Big Guys -/span-
-div- Nike
-span- Shoes -/span-
-/div-
-/H1- So that brings me back to the original concern, do search engines care about tags inside the H1? The only other way to accomplish the color changes that I can think of would be to have a fairly large chunk of javascript setup to go through H1's to colorize them using the span tags. That is unless GoogleBot has started to execute javascript while crawling the sites now...1 -
URLs with Hashtags - Does Google Index Them?
Hi there, I have a potential issue with a site whereby all pages are dynamically populated using Javascript. Thus, an example of an URL on their site would be www.example.com/#!/category/product. I have read lots of conflicting information on the web - some says Google will ignore everything after the hashtag; other people say that Google will now index everything after the hashtag. Does anybody have any conclusive information about this? Any links to Google or Matt Cutts as confirmation would be brilliant. P.S. I am aware about the potential issue of duplicate content, but I can assure you that has been dealt with. I am only concerned about whether Google will index full URLs that contain hashtags. Thanks all! Mark
Web Design | | markadoi840 -
How to Add canonical tags on .ASPX pages?
What is the proper way (or is it possible) to add canonical tags on website pages that end in .aspx? If you add a canonical tag to the Master Page it will put that exact canonical tag on every page, which is bad. Is there a different version of the tag to put on individual pages? And one to put on the home page without the Master Page error?
Web Design | | Ryan-Bradley0