Google Indexed = 35, 445 pages, Bing Indexed = 243 pages... Why?
-
Dear MozSquad,
Can anyone check our site and let me know if there's anything super apparent that would cause Bing to treat us like a bum on the street? I recently made some structural changes which really helped with Google, but Bing didn't even budge. It's a lot harder to keep up with all the SEO initiatives I have in mind with it being a small start-up where I'm responsible for planning the entire Internet Marketing campaign, giving constant input on UX and site design, etc on top of 900 other things, so I figured it'd be a good time to use The Moz to help a brother out. Ideas?
Domain: homeandgardendesignideas.com (yeah, I know it's a little long =P)
-
Certainly no issues for Bing, they're actually hitting us more than Google.
| 2 | 102718 | 7.22% | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) |
| 3 | 75772 | 5.33% | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) | -
Mike,
I think that actually did give me some pretty good insight which I hadn't thought of when I was initially considering methods to answer this question.
After digging into the index with some filters, what I'm seeing is that Bing is clearly lagging far behind Google regarding the speed in which they're picking up on changes. I'm looking at piles of things that were changed and re-structured weeks (or even a couple months) ago and it hasn't picked them up at all. I don't think it's a problem on my end, because Google clearly has no problem crawling me. I guess I'll need to double-check the server logs and see what Bingbot's habits are.
I've always assumed they would be equal in how long t takes to update their indexes, etc and that they'd simply have slightly different algorithms, but looks like Goog/Bingie may differ much more in operation than I thought.
-
Maybe give this Bing Index Explorer tool a whirl?
"The Index Explorer tool in the Reports & Data section provides you with a unique view of how Bing sees your site. It reflects all the URLs we have seen on the web, including redirects, broken links, or those blocked by robots.txt, organized in an file explorer-like fashion. This view can help you get some really detailed insights into how your site was seen by the search engine during recent crawls. It can help discover both issues on your site as well as opportunities."
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
I should have mentioned, I setup Bing Webmaster Tools originally and have kept up-to-date sitemaps in it for the past 3 or 4 months.
I've always noticed Bing to kind of lag behind Google, but I'm really surprised to only see ~500 pages indexed. I was once hired to do the SEO for an auto dealer who had dirty SEO and keyword stuffing all over his poorly structured site and I remember Bing being much more responsive to their site than they are to ours, even though they didn't even have BWMT setup prior to my involvement. Weird.
-
Bing seems to always index much slower than Google, but agree with Mike. Anything you can do to help Bing crawl your site, do it.
-
Did you submit a new sitemap in your Bing Webmaster Tools?
Mike
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
-
Any idea how Google is doing this? Is it schematic? http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/28/google-adds-full-restaurant-menus-to-its-search-results-pages/
Google is now showing menus on select searches. Any idea how they are getting this information? I would like to make sure my clients get visibility this way.
On-Page Optimization | | Ron_McCabe0 -
Google Drop
I started using SEOMOZ due to a sudden and huge drop in Google for two main keywords (hair bows and baby headbands). Our site (BloomingBows.com) has held a top three spot for years with these words and then in the last few months has dropped down on the first page and now they are completely off the charts. Is there any insight as to why? Also, we have been very active using the data from here in the last week or so to clean up and improve anything listed, but I am still seeing keywords drop into the 40 - 60 position and our traffic is drying up. Starting to panic and wondering if I am missing something or going about this in the wrong way. ANY insight is appreciated at this point!! Thank you!!
On-Page Optimization | | bloomingB0 -
Why Does Google Keep Changing My Page Titles?
I know Google has been doing this for quite some time but how do you "control" what Google will display as your page name? Lots of my pages come up with a title like "[searched keyword] - [website name]" in the search results. I usually a huge drop in CTR when this happens. On the other hand, there are some pages which have kept their title intact in the search results. So what gives? How come one page's title is changed and the other is not?
On-Page Optimization | | sbrault740 -
Moving Top rank Page urls off my Home page and nesting them on one page? Good idea?
I am basically trying to cut down the amount of links on my home page to make it less eye boggling and move stuff around. So i have of my Urls on my home page that lead to pages that rank very well within google. My questions is can i remove those urls to a separate page to group them together and then showcase that one link to that page on my home page. Is that a good idea or i am going to loose my link juice and position in search? The physical urls on those pages wont change at all.
On-Page Optimization | | Dante130 -
Source page leading to a 404 pages in reports
Hi everybody, I wonder how to find and quickly correct 404 errors in my crawl reports : SeoMoz says me "http://domain.com/this-page-is-dead" is 404, but I can't figure out a source page where a link to that url appears. I tried a google link:http://domain.com/this-page-is-dead request, with no more luck. I imagine the trick is trivial, but I need it 🙂 Moreover, why do not show a list of pages referring to this 404 page on reports ? Thanks, Loïc
On-Page Optimization | | mandinga0 -
Page Rank
I had just made a 301 re-direct on one of our product pages which had a PR of 4, now that Google has indexed the new page, it's now got a PR of 0, i'm struggling to understand why this could be, i know that you may see a drop of 1, which has happened in the past, but this drop just does not make sense. Any ideas of why this could be? Kind Regards
On-Page Optimization | | Paul780 -
Spammy keywords on a page
My client's website has a box of text on each page that is spammy and horrible to read and stuffed with keywords. The text boxes are there only for search engines as they mean nothing to humans. I say remove them as it must be doing more harm than good. However, my client is scared to remove them as the text has been there on each page for ten years and he is worried about a drop in visitor numbers if they are removed. Is he right to be worried?
On-Page Optimization | | mascotmike0 -
How can we get Google to offer postcard verification for our Place Page?
Most of the time, when we claim a Google Place Page, they give 2 choices to verify ownership: 1) phone verification and 2) postcard verification. But right now (and for several weeks), for our listing, they are only giving the phone verification choice, which unfortunately won't work with our automated phone system. How can we get our Place Page listing verified through a postcard sent to our address, when Google isn't presenting that as an option?
On-Page Optimization | | DenisL0