Anyone else struggling to get indexed on Bing?

I’ve got a local service website that’s doing well on Google and even ranking decently on Google My Business. But for some reason, none of my pages are being indexed on Bing. My site has a DR of 15 (it’s six months old, and I’ve been managing it for the last two months). Every time I check Bing’s guidelines, it just says there’s an issue, but I can’t figure out what’s wrong.

I’ve already checked the sitemap, headings, structure everything looks fine. Bing’s bot has access to all the pages (verified with the robots.txt), and the site is properly set up on Bing Webmaster Tools. Has anyone faced this issue? Any ideas on what I could try?

Note: Please don’t DM me offering SEO services.

Have you tried using IndexNow?

zachdin said:
Have you tried using IndexNow?

Yep, IndexNow is being promoted heavily by Bing. It lets you notify Bing right away whenever you make changes to your site whether it’s adding, updating or deleting a page. This way, Bing can find and index your content faster instead of waiting for its crawler to discover it. If you still have issues after that, I’d recommend reviewing the quality of the pages you’re trying to get indexed.

@Smart
I had five pages indexed a month ago, but now they’re all gone. I’ve checked the site explorer, and it shows no data, no crawl errors, and no 404s. Every time I try filtering with ‘all URLs’ in the site explorer, everything comes back as ‘excluded’. I have no clue what’s going on.

Honestly, Bing is weird about indexing. Sometimes they just drop your site. You’re better off focusing on Google.

BloggaLeez said:
Honestly, Bing is weird about indexing. Sometimes they just drop your site. You’re better off focusing on Google.

I get that, but a lot of older folks around here use Bing, and they’re important customers for our business. That’s why I really want the site to show up on both platforms.

In my experience, Bing support is surprisingly responsive. If you reach out to them by email, a real person will look into it, but they’ll probably just tell you to wait. Bing can be really slow with indexing, and the webmaster console takes even longer to show updates.

Try doing a ‘site:’ search on Bing to see if your pages are already indexed. Sometimes they show up there even if the console says otherwise.

Try contacting Bing support through the Webmaster Tools dashboard. They have an option to send them an email directly.

It’s super frustrating when your site does well on Google but struggles with Bing. Since you’ve already checked the basics like your sitemap, robots.txt, and structure, here are a few other things that might help:

  1. Check Bing’s guidelines in detail: Even if it seems like everything’s fine, there could be something small Bing doesn’t like that isn’t obvious in Google’s system. It could be related to content, engagement, or your backlink profile.

  2. Boost your backlinks: Bing tends to care more about high-quality backlinks. If your DR is 15, you might want to work on getting more links from well-known sites to strengthen your profile.

  3. Look for manual actions: Make sure there aren’t any penalties or warnings listed in Bing Webmaster Tools that could be stopping your pages from being indexed.

  4. Focus on local relevance: Bing loves content that’s specific to a local audience. Try adding more details about the areas you serve, and use testimonials if possible—it might improve your chances of indexing.

  5. Submit URLs manually: You can use the ‘Submit URL’ feature in Bing Webmaster Tools to push key pages for indexing. It’s not a long-term fix, but it can help get things moving.

  6. Use IndexNow for urgent updates: If you need Bing to check certain pages quickly, this feature can help by notifying Bing when your content changes.

  7. Adjust SEO for Bing’s algorithm: Bing doesn’t work exactly like Google. It can be more sensitive to keyword density, schema markup, and mobile responsiveness, so it might be worth double-checking those elements.