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 in regard to putting 2-3 keywords in a title tag.
Hi all, Here is the situation. There are two services A and B in the page. B is more like a complement to A (they have something in common). C is the umbrella term over A and B. However, our company focuses more on A (70%) than B (30%). Questions: 1. Can I rank the keyword A for the page, while the page has B? (e.g. A | brand name) Will it hurt the seo, with B being in the page? 2. If I write the title tag this way: A | B | brand name . Will A and B dilute each other? 3. How about this: **A | C | brand name **(the idea behind this: We focus on A, but also include C because we have B in the page.) Does this make any sense? I am a newbie to SEO and I realize that could be confusing. Thank you for any support and explanation.
Web Design | | Raymondlee0 -
How to prevent development website subdomain from being indexed?
Hello awesome MOZ Community! Our development team uses a sub-domain "dev.example.com" for our SEO clients' websites. This allows changes to be made to the dev site (U/X changes, forms testing, etc.) for client approval and testing. An embarrassing discovery was made. Naturally, when you run a "site:example.com" the "dev.example.com" is being indexed. We don't want our clients websites to get penalized or lose killer SERPs because of duplicate content. The solution that is being implemented is to edit the robots.txt file and block the dev site from being indexed by search engines. My questions is, does anyone in the MOZ Community disagree with this solution? Can you recommend another solution? Would you advise against using the sub-domain "dev." for live and ongoing development websites? Thanks!
Web Design | | SproutDigital0 -
Nesting <a>tag for rel="nofollow"</a>
I just wanted to quickly run this past someone. I have some footer links I want set to nofollow: <map <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">name</map>="Map"><area <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">shape="rect" coords="10,39,73,101" href="URL" target="_blank" alt="some text"> should this be <map <span class="webkit-html-tag">name</map <span>="Map"><area <span class="webkit-html-tag">shape</area <span>="rect" coords="10,39,73,101 <a <span class="webkit-html-tag">href="URL" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" alt="some text"></a <span> Want to check before I advise. If this is not the way how can I fix?
Web Design | | MickEdwards0 -
Can only get a few pages indexed on by google
Hi I've touched upon this before on previous questions so apologies for repeating myself. In a nutshell out of the 60 webpages submitted to Google 11 have been indexed and out of the 140 images submitted none have indexed any ideas would be great! Here is a screen shot of what Google Webmaster is showing http://www.tidy-books.com/sitemapshow.png and here is the sitemap - > http://www.tidy-books.com/sitemap/us/sitemap.xml Thanks
Web Design | | tidybooks0 -
Best way to handle Spanish/English WEBSITE
Hey guys, How are you doing? I have a website (www.aceromart.com ) in which the primary language is Spanish. The company is oriented toward the Mexican Audience. However, recently we are dealing with many U.S companies. Also, we want to be included in the Yahoo Directory and several other directories which demand a U.S version of the website. So i want to have a U.S version of the website. My ecommerce is based in the NETWORK Solutions platform and has around 1,000 products and pages. What is the best way to include an English version of the website. Ive seen some pages using the Google traslate tool, which only traslates the text. Hope to hear some of your ideas, Regards,
Web Design | | JesusD0 -
Text in Images vs. Alt tags
Hi on my homepage i h ave multiple images They have the appropriate alt text for each image, but the text which the image displays is not written into the page and styled using CSS rather than placing text within an image. Is this a issue worth correcting, or is it sufficient to have just alt text for each image. Any major pros from having putting the text in the image into the CMS using appropriate CSS styling to achieve the same effect.
Web Design | | monster990 -
Usual time to index and rank a new site
Hi Just wondering if anyone knew how long it usually takes for a brand new site to get indexed and ranked? I launched a new site about 5 weeks ago. So far I have had 96,000 pages indexed but the majority haven't ranked particularly well or appeared. The ones that have ranked aren't ranking high even though they have better content than competitors sites... And my old domain. Do I just need to hang tight and wait till my domain authority improves? Is there anything I can do to speed up this process? cheers
Web Design | | DavidLenehan0 -
Canonical Tag
I've been helping someone out with their website, and I noticed the person who built the site made the canonical tags like this:
Web Design | | StandUpCubicles
href="http://www.example.com/" rel="canonical" /> I'm use to seeing it how seomoz does it: Does this matter? Is it ok to have it inverted? They also have another canonical tag in there like this:
var hs_canonical_url = "http\x3A\x2F\x2Fwww.example.com\x2Fhome" Any idea what that is? Could it be hurting the site?0