Bing doesn’t index my site: how I solved

If you try to submit a URL on Bing Webmaster Tools, and face the dreaded message: “The inspected URL is known to Bing but has some issues which are preventing indexation. We recommend you to follow Bing Webmaster Guidelines to increase your chances of indexation.”…, I feel your distress.

I faced the same issue, and here’s how I solved my case. I don’t assure it will work also for you, but it’s worth trying if you have the same problem.

Bing didn’t want to index my page

It all started when I submitted a page for indexing on Bing Webmaster Tool, for a website which already had some pages indexed and well ranked.

It was not a new website, since it’s been online for some years. Never had an indexing issue, and indeed some of my pages are also ranking well on Google and Bing.

But, for a couple of pages, it happened that mysteriously in late April 2006, Bing won’t index at all them. I noticed that behavior after multiple submission of the url for inspection. Every time, a strange warning message appeared, suggesting there’s something bad with the adherence to some “guidelines” and the encouragement to abide to those rules.

Bing in this message explicitly says the URL can’t be indexed, and that’s all.

Here it is, the dreaded message:

Bing doesn't index my page it says URL cannot appear on Bing it has some issues which are preventing indexation follow bing webmaster guidelines

The search for a solution

Obviously, I turned to the web for a solution. Many others faced the same problem, both for isolated pages or for whole websites.

First I found this page (Recovery from a Bing de-indexing) from SimonCox.com, explaining his personal journey in solving the same problem. He apparently had some previous html code that prevented indexing at Bing’s eyes. Apparently, it worked for him.

But I knew I hadn’t any strange html on that website, which has a default theme from a very well trusted managed WordPress hosting. So I had to find somewhere else the issue.

Cox’s site again linked another blog which solved the thing in its own way: The Relative Absurdity of Getting Your Website to be Indexed by Bing. Here the author meditates on the apparent extreme behavior by Bing, which seems to Blok a site if the html meta description is left empty.

The meta description tag is an HTML element that provides a short summary of a webpage’s content.

It usually looks like this in code:

<meta name="description" content="A brief description of the page">

Search engines like Google often display this text under the page title in search results. While it doesn’t directly affect rankings, it influences click-through rate by helping users decide whether to visit your page.

In short: it’s your page’s mini-advertisement in search results.

You can write the meta description manually for each page or post. A custom description lets you highlight the most relevant points and make the snippet more appealing to users.

But many SEO plugins can automatically generate a meta description based on your content. This can save time, and while the results may be less precise or engaging, I think overall it’s a good solution.

In practice, a good strategy is to manually write meta descriptions for your most important pages, and rely on plugins for the rest. I found a nice seo plugin which is Slim SEO (I’m not an affiliate to that developer, nor sponsored in any ways, I just use it since it’s free), that can set to create automatically meta description from excerpts (the firs words of your pages or posts), and is flexible enough to let you integrate each description with your own words, if you like.

So, It happened in fact that I hadn’t implemented a meta deception on my website which had that bing ranking issue. So I immediately implemented that.

Issue solved with some passages

I’m not sure what exactly solved the issue, if it was the meta description tag alone, but in a rush of decisiveness, I did all the following almost simultaneously, in the span of some minutes:

implemented the meta description, I used a seo plugin (Slim SEO, but any or manually doing it will do).
re-submitted the sitemap to Bing webmaster tools.
again asked Bing to index the urls, manually checking the Url within Bing webmaster tools. Did it one or three times, seemed not working, but as you can see below, after some minutes it worked (maybe waiting for website changes to be synced with the servers?).
I wrote to Bing customer service, opening a ticket and telling exactly which urls weren’t indexed. Here you can open a ticket with Bing: https://www.bing.com/webmasters/support

My site is finally indexed!

The good news is, just a half an hour, maybe less, after implementing those measures, I received a satisfying response from Bing to my ticket’s questions.

That’s the email, which gives good advice to anyone facing similar issues (bold is mine here):

Hi,

Thank you for contacting Bing Webmaster Support.

I have investigated your query and would like to inform you that the URL is now showing as crawled / indexed in the URL inspection tool. We recommend using the “Request Indexing” option while simultaneously submitting the sitemap. However, please note that for super fresh websites or URLs, it may take 2 to 3 crawl cycles to get crawled and indexed in Bing.

We recommend using IndexNow to instantly notify Bing and other search engines about your new or updated URLs. To learn more about IndexNow and how to use it, please visit IndexNow | Bing Webmaster Tools.

I hope the resolution provided has been able to fully address your issue. I will be closing this ticket. However, if you do have any follow-up questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me or open a new support ticket.

Best regards,

…

So, that’s great! My site and especially the “incriminated” urls are indexed and ranking now.

The thing is, there wasn’t any particular “breaking of guidelines”, which are very general advices on how to draft a generic well written and useful page or post.

No, it appears probably that it is indeed an issue where Bing sees the absence of meta description (which is of SEO pertinence, not really a structural problem!), as a motive not to index your site. Quite extreme indeed.

The interesting notes from the email

Above all, it’s interesting the answer I received, which points out the opportunity to:

use the “Request Indexing” option while simultaneously submitting the sitemap.
and it notes that: it may take 2 to 3 crawl cycles to get crawled and indexed in Bing.

It’s worth keeping that in mind, above as seen before having implemented generic good SEO practices like a default meta description.

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