Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How can I get Bing to index my subdomain correctly?
-
Hi guys,
My website exists on a subdomain (i.e. https://website.subdomain.com) and is being indexed correctly on all search engines except Bing and Duck Duck Go, which list 'https://www.website.subdomain.com'. Unfortunately my subdomain isn't configured for www (the domain is out of my control), so searchers are seeing a server error when clicking on my homepage in the SERPs.
I have verified the site successfully in Bing Webmaster Tools, but it still shows up incorrectly.
Does anyone have any advice on how I could fix this issue?
Thank you!
-
Hi guys, I thought you'd be interested in a follow up on this.
So I submitted my sitemap to Bing - all good, no issues, Bing successfully retrieved it.
However after submitting it, my site has effectively disappeared from the SERPs! A number of internal pages are being indexed, but the head/brand queries (where I was ranking incorrectly at #1) are now showing nothing.
Very strange. Not sure what else I can do - luckily Bing accounts for a tiny fraction of my traffic!
Cheers
Karl
-
Hi guys,
Sorry for the late reply and thanks for the help!
It's not super straightforward for me to generate a sitemap as the backend of my site is on a separate domain to the presentation layer / front-end. In saying that, it is possible and it's something I'll be doing soon. Will report back and let you know how things go...
Cheers
-
Hi Karl, did you see Kristina's question? We'd love an update on your situation, thanks!
Christy
-
Hi Karl,
That's tough! Unfortunately, I've heard of a lot of weird stories like that, where Bing gets confused. Have you shared a sitemap with Bing, which only includes non "www" URLs?
Best,
Kristina
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
-
How to get local search volumes?
Hi Guys, I want to get search volumes for "carpet cleaning" for certain areas in Sydney, Australia. I'm using this process: Choose to ‘Search for new keyword and ad group ideas’. Enter the main keywords regarding your product / service Remove any default country targeting Specify your chosen location (s) by targeting specific cities / regions Click to ‘Get ideas’ The problem is none of the areas, even popular ones (like north sydney, surry hills, newtown, manly) are appearing and Google keyword tool, no matches. Is there any other tools or sources of data i can use to get accurate search volumes for these areas? Any recommendations would be very much appreciated. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wozniak650 -
Recovering from index problem
Hi all. For a while, we've been working on http://thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/. Everything was going swimmingly, and we had a top 5 ranking for the term 'bird hides' for this page - http://thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/products/bird-hides. Then disaster struck! The client added a link with a faulty parameter in the Joomla back end that caused a bunch of duplicate content issues. Before this happened, all the site's 19 pages were indexed. Now it's just a handful, including the faulty URL (<cite>thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/index.php?id=13</cite>) This shows the issue pretty clearly. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Athewilddeckcompany.co.uk&oq=site%3Athewilddeckcompany.co.uk&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2178j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 I've removed the link, redirected the bad URL, updated the site map and got some new links pointing at the site to resolve the problem. Yet almost two month later, the bad URL is still showing in the SERPs and the indexing problem is still there. Any ideas? I'm stumped!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Google & Bing not indexing a Joomla Site properly....
Can someone explain the following to me please. The background: I launched a new website - new domain with no history. I added the domain to my Bing webmaster tools account, verified the domain and submitted the XML sitemap at the same time. I added the domain to my Google analytics account and link webmaster tools and verified the domain - I was NOT asked to submit the sitemap or anything. The site has only 10 pages. The situation: The site shows up in bing when I search using site:www.domain.com - Pages indexed:- 1 (the home page) The site shows up in google when I search using site:www.domain.com - Pages indexed:- 30 Please note Google found 30 pages - the sitemap and site only has 10 pages - I have found out due to the way the site has been built that there are "hidden" pages i.e. A page displaying half of a page as it is made up using element in Joomla. My questions:- 1. Why does Bing find 1 page and Google find 30 - surely Bing should at least find the 10 pages of the site as it has the sitemap? (I suspect I know the answer but I want other peoples input). 2. Why does Google find these hidden elements - Whats the best way to sort this - controllnig the htaccess or robots.txt OR have the programmer look into how Joomla works more to stop this happening. 3. Any Joomla experts out there had the same experience with "hidden" pages showing when you type site:www.domain.com into Google. I will look forward to your input! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Use of subdomains, subdirectories or both?
Hello, i would like your advice on a dilemma i am facing. I am working a new project that is going to release soon, thats a network of users with personal profiles seperated in categories for example lets say the categories are colors. So let say i am a member and i belong in red color categorie and i got a page where i update my personal information/cv/resume as well as a personal blog thats on that page. So the main site is giving the option to user to search for members by the criteria of color. My first idea is that all users should own a subdomain (and this is how its developed so far) thats easy to use and since the domain name is really small (just 3 letters) i believe subdomain worth since personal site will be easy to remember. My dilemma is should all users own a subdomain, a subdirectory or both and if both witch one should be the canonical? Since it said that search engines treat subdomains as different stand-alone sites, whats best for the main site? to show multiple search results with profiles in subdomains or subdirectories? What if i use both? meaning in search results i use search directory url for each profile while same time each profile owns a subdomains as well? and if so which one should be the canonical? Thanks in advance, C
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HaCos0 -
Should we stream videos from a subdomain or subfolder?
This is causing some hand-wrangling and I need some help. Let's say we were developing rich video content for our products and our agency is hosting the content on a new external server. There are already plans to link to these videos from product detail pages, category pages, and landing pages on our main website: www.example.com. Would it be better to create a new subdomain or to use a subfolder with a reverse proxy technique for this video content? It's not truly a microsite and will not have a gallery page to navigate the various videos. For example, would it be better to use this: video.example.com/ ...or this (executed with a reverse proxy😞 www.example.com/video/ Of course, regardless of whether this new content will live on a subdomain or within a subfolder, we plan on creating a video Sitemap using guidance from Justin Hammack in this terrific post.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ryan-Ricketts1 -
Can this site be optimised?
I have been told that because of the technology this site was developed with it cannot be changed for example urls title and meta tags cannot be changed. why is that and what other types of sites also cannot be changed. http://www.alliedpickfords.com/Pages/Landing.aspx For example i have been told alot of online stores cannot be optimised because the urls change every time some one goes to the page therefor you cant lionk to a certain page is that true and what is the way around it if any.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | duncan2740 -
Bad neighborhood linking - anyone can share experience how significant it can impact rankings?
SEOMoz community, If you have followed our latest Q&A posts you know by now that we have been suffering since the last 8 months from a severe Google penalty we are still trying to resolve. Our international portfolio of sports properties has suffered significant ranking losses across the board. While we have been tediously trying to troubleshoot the problem for a while now we might be up to a hot lead now. We realized that one of the properties outside of our key properties, but are site that our key properties are heavily linking to (+100 outgoing links per property) seems to have received a significant Google penalty in a sense that it has been completely delisted from the Google index and lost all its PageRank (Pr4) While we are buffed to see such sort of delisting, we are hopeful that this might be the core of our experienced issues in the past i.e. that our key properties have been devalued due to heavy linking to a bad neighborhood site. My question two the community are two-fold: Can anyone share any experience if it is indeed considered possible that a high number of external links to one bad neighboorhood domain can cause significant ranking drops in the rank from being top 3 ranked to be ranked at around a 140 for a competetive key word? The busted site has a large set of high quality external links. If we swap domains is there any way to port over any link juice or will the penalty be passed along? If that is the case I assume the best approach would be to reach out to all the link authorities and have tem link to the new domain instead of the busted site? Thanks /Thomas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomypro0 -
Can a XML sitemap index point to other sitemaps indexes?
We have a massive site that is having some issue being fully crawled due to some of our site architecture and linking. Is it possible to have a XML sitemap index point to other sitemap indexes rather than standalone XML sitemaps? Has anyone done this successfully? Based upon the description here: http://sitemaps.org/protocol.php#index it seems like it should be possible. Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CareerBliss0