Skip to main content Accessibility statement Glossary Sitemap

Call us on +44 (0)1508 578 046, 

info at simiusweb.com
, or use our online form

Bing - teething issues

Published: 10th August 2009

Author: Andrew Hart

Launching a new search engine these days means certain comparison to Google. The speed, accuracy and presentation of your results are all going to be key factors in success.

However, there are some real basics that don't fall under the heading of 'teething issues' that Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, seems to have forgotten.

Noindex / nofollow are being ignored

An important meta instruction, <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />, is currently being ignored by Bing.

This instruction is used by web masters to help search engines understand which pages are intended to be included in search results and, more importantly, which are to be ignored / excluded. For instance, you don't want your custom 404 error being indexed.

If your site is being affected by this error you might want to read this article on the Bing community forum.

Index blues

In addition to the teething problems with how Bing indexes the web, there are also issues with how often and how thoroughly it indexes. Many sites are not included in its index, and those that are there report only a handful of pages being indexed. Ironically - the exact opposite of the problem it faces with ignoring noindex requests!

If you haven't already done so you really ought to check whether or not your site appears in Bing's index as this isn't guaranteed, no matter how good your ranking in Google, Yahoo! and even Microsoft's own MSN search engine.

If you are not listed then submit the URL of your home page via http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

Many people have reported that Bing is not indexing their entire site. A few tips to follow are:

  • Submit an XML sitemap via http://www.bing.com/webmaster/WebmasterManageSitesPage.aspx - requires a Windows Live account
  • An HTML sitemap can also be a good alternative if you don't want to (or simply can't) deal with XML sitemaps
  • Ensure you aren't using a navigation mechanism that relies on JavaScript or Flash
  • Make sure your robots.txt file is correctly configured
  • Avoid CMSs that generate long, dynamically generated URLs (especially avoid special characters such as ? and +).

The future

It is good to see some development and competition outside of Google. Competition leads to innovation which Google themselves have welcomed.

It will be interesting to see just how effective Microsoft's efforts in the search engine market will be over the next few months, and just how many bugs emerge.

Whatever happens, Bing is a search engine that you should include in your site analytics if you don't already!