4

I have a website that is about 9 months old that hosts and distributes a desktop utility/productivity tool. Never had issues with Google, but I have a continuous streak of very frustrating experience with Bing.com. The site was deindexed from the start but I was not aware of that until early summer when I added it to their webmaster tools. After my initial appeal it was added to the index (after a month of waiting), only to be removed again a few days later.

After every interaction with webmaster support team, I am only encouraged to read their guidelines, but they refuse to tell me exactly what is wrong, so I am left guessing. Website is professionally made, with some basic on-site SEO and no bad off-site SEO was ever employed. The executable is signed with an EV code signing certificate that belongs to our organization. SSL is obviously working, we got a redirect from www to non www domain and I also added canonical tags to all our pages, which is apparently a big deal for Bing in terms of duplicated content.

What make this really strange is that it used to say in webmaster tools that the site was not in index, but after 2nd removal it says now:
Indexed but cannot be served

And below: The inspected URL has been indexed successfully but there are some issues which might prevent us from serving it to our users. Please contact Bing Webmaster support for more details. By now I assume the contact Bing for more details is an inside joke.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I know Bing is way smaller than Google, but I was ranking well the short time it was in index and I could really use the free traffic from it. Should I move it to Azure hosting? Do I need to obtain some additional certification? I keep asking them for specifics but I never get any.

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

In my opinion, you should not do anything with it. Go back to it next quarter and see if if hasn't straightened itself out.

You seem more informed than 75% of websites. I wouldn't worry about this.

You can manually check if your site is indexed on most engines by:

site:mysite.com

If you see results, you're indexed.

I've been in SEO for almost 7 years. I run a consultancy, and am very involved in the industry.

I guarantee that Bing's stuff is broken. Of course they have no idea why. I don't trust their data, it's always been bunk.

This advice is clearly not based in fact, but instead on experience. Please take this for what it's worth.

Improve this answer
7
  • Thank you Mike. Indeed site:mysite.com shows a message that some content was removed and no other hits are shown, that is why I know I am removed from index in Bing. I got 3 email replies so far that seem like they were sent by a human or being a result of a manual review by a human, and they all tell me that my site is not compliant with their guidelines but they refuse to give any further comments when I ask for it in my reply.
    – miran80
    Commented Aug 12, 2021 at 16:06
  • Very odd, and you aren't experiencing anything like this with Google? No manual actions or anything listed in Search Console? @miran80
    – Mike Ciffone
    Commented Aug 13, 2021 at 15:23
  • No issues with Google, all pages are in index for months. Not ranking anywhere near top but also not burred. There was a little hiccup early on with Google when they flagged the executable as unsafe but after asking for a manual review they greenlit it within a few hours. I keep thinking maybe this is the issue with Bing as well and I told them Microsoft online analysis cleared us throughout development process at every upload but they don't want to confirm if this is the reason for not being let in index. It could be anything.
    – miran80
    Commented Aug 13, 2021 at 17:32
  • I suspect that executable is the issue with Microsoft then - there are a number of promising search engines on the horizon though! Brave and Neeva are a couple to watch.
    – Mike Ciffone
    Commented Aug 13, 2021 at 21:09
  • Besides MS's own Store, which website would be the most trustworthy to host our program? If hosting an executable is an issue, it could be hosted and reviewed by trustable 3rd party. Big if, but worth a try. As for Brave, I thought most people that switch to it use DDG as a search engine, which is part of MS Bing's network ad network.
    – miran80
    Commented Aug 14, 2021 at 13:15

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.