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.
Japanese URL-structured sitemap (pages) not being indexed by Bing Webmaster Tools
-
Hello everyone,
I am facing an issue with the sitemap submission feature in Bing Webmaster Tools for a Japanese language subdirectory domain project. Just to outline the key points:
-
The website is based on a subdirectory URL ( example.com/ja/ )
-
The Japanese URLs (when pages are published in WordPress) are not being encoded. They are entered in pure Kanji.
-
Google Webmaster Tools, for instance, has no issues reading and indexing the page's URLs in its sitemap submission area (all pages are being indexed).
When it comes to Bing Webmaster Tools it's a different story, though. Basically, after the sitemap has been submitted ( example.com/ja/sitemap.xml ), it does report an error that it failed to download this part of the sitemap: "page-sitemap.xml" (basically the sitemap featuring all the sites pages). That means that no URLs have been submitted to Bing either.
My apprehension is that Bing Webmaster Tools does not understand the Japanese URLs (or the Kanji for that matter). Therefore, I generally wonder what the correct way is to go on about this.
When viewing the sitemap ( example.com/ja/page-sitemap.xml ) in a web browser, though, the Japanese URL's characters are already displayed as encoded.
I am not sure if submitting the Kanji style URLs separately is a solution. In Bing Webmaster Tools this can only be done on the root domain level ( example.com ). However, surely there must be a way to make Bing's sitemap submission understand Japanese style sitemaps?
Many thanks everyone for any advice!
-
-
Hello there,
Thanks for your suggestions and sorry for the late response. In fact, I also left an inquiry with the Bing Webmaster Tools mail support (I did not even realise they offered this service), and they answered within one day.
They confirmed that the site runs without any errors and that the sitemap has now been submitted successfully. Upon checking I can confirm this (the sitemaps URLs have finally been submitted). Therefore, all is in order now.
I still do not understand why prior to this the JA sitemap URLs were not being submitted (for weeks), even though I tried to make Bing Webmaster Tools re-crawl it by re-submitting the sitemap.
In any case, I guess this is one of these episodes where the problem simply fixed itself. Kudos to their support though...
Thanks everyone
-
Hey there–a few thoughts/questions:
- have you correctly implemented hreflang tags (tags that display the alternate language & country versions in the section of every page of your site)?
- why did you choose to create a separate sitemap that lives under the /ja page path? you could, instead, add alternate URLs to the JP version of your content in your existing sitemap
- I doubt this is why you're seeing issues, but is there a particular reason you chose JA as the page path as opposed to the HTML ISO country code for Japan, JP?
To specifically answer your Q about Kanji, I have not found anything that states Bing does not support Kanji. After some preliminary searching, it also looks like Bing does present URLs with Kanji characters in its results (example). As a result, I don't think Kanji is the reason you're having trouble getting your JP sitemap read by Bing.
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
-
Escort directory page indexing issues
Re; escortdirectory-uk.com, escortdirectory-usa.com, escortdirectory-oz.com.au,
Technical SEO | | ZuricoDrexia
Hi, We are an escort directory with 10 years history. We have multiple locations within the following countries, UK, USA, AUS. Although many of our locations (towns and cities) index on page one of Google, just as many do not. Can anyone give us a clue as to why this may be?0 -
My backlinks are not showing in webmaster tools? Why
Hi Experts, I have follow backlinks from a domain for 6 months, but its not apear in Links to Your Site tools (search console) that domain has 302k indexed pages in google! Could you please explain me why google not showing this type of backlinks?
Technical SEO | | denakalami7 -
Indexing product attributes in sitemap
Hey Mozzers! I'm battling a few questions about the sitemap for my ecommerce store. Could you help me out? Is it necessary to include your product attributes in the sitemap? I'm not sure why it would matter to have a sitemap that lists everything in the color cherry. Also, if the attributes were included in the sitemap, would that count as duplicate content for the same products to show up in multiple attributes? Is there any benefit to submitting the sitemaps individually? For example, submitting /product-sitemap.xml, /product_brand-sitemap.xml versus just /sitemap.xml? Any other best practices for managing my ecommerce sitemap, or great resources, would be very helpful. Thank you! a1vUz
Technical SEO | | localwork0 -
Vanity URLs are being indexed in Google
We are currently using vanity URLs to track offline marketing, the vanity URL is structured as www.clientdomain.com/publication, this URL then is 302 redirected to the actual URL on the website not a custom landing page. The resulting redirected URL looks like: www.clientdomain.com/xyzpage?utm_source=print&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=printcampaign. We have started to notice that some of the vanity URLs are being indexed in Google search. To prevent this from happening should we be using a 301 redirect instead of a 302 and will the Google index ignore the utm parameters in the URL that is being 301 redirect to? If not, any suggestions on how to handle? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seogirl221 -
When creating parent and child pages should key words be repeated in url and page title?
We are in the direct mail advertising business: PrintLabelAndMail.com Example: Parent:
Technical SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach
Postcard Direct Mail Children:
Postcard Mailings
Postcard Design
Postcard Samples
Postcard Pricing
Postcard Advantages should "postcard" be repeated in the URL and Page Title? and in this example should each of the 5 children link back directly to the parent or would it be better to "daisy chain" them using each as parent for the next?0 -
De-indexing millions of pages - would this work?
Hi all, We run an e-commerce site with a catalogue of around 5 million products. Unfortunately, we have let Googlebot crawl and index tens of millions of search URLs, the majority of which are very thin of content or duplicates of other URLs. In short: we are in deep. Our bloated Google-index is hampering our real content to rank; Googlebot does not bother crawling our real content (product pages specifically) and hammers the life out of our servers. Since having Googlebot crawl and de-index tens of millions of old URLs would probably take years (?), my plan is this: 301 redirect all old SERP URLs to a new SERP URL. If new URL should not be indexed, add meta robots noindex tag on new URL. When it is evident that Google has indexed most "high quality" new URLs, robots.txt disallow crawling of old SERP URLs. Then directory style remove all old SERP URLs in GWT URL Removal Tool This would be an example of an old URL:
Technical SEO | | TalkInThePark
www.site.com/cgi-bin/weirdapplicationname.cgi?word=bmw&what=1.2&how=2 This would be an example of a new URL:
www.site.com/search?q=bmw&category=cars&color=blue I have to specific questions: Would Google both de-index the old URL and not index the new URL after 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL (which is noindexed) as described in point 2 above? What risks are associated with removing tens of millions of URLs directory style in GWT URL Removal Tool? I have done this before but then I removed "only" some useless 50 000 "add to cart"-URLs.Google says themselves that you should not remove duplicate/thin content this way and that using this tool tools this way "may cause problems for your site". And yes, these tens of millions of SERP URLs is a result of a faceted navigation/search function let loose all to long.
And no, we cannot wait for Googlebot to crawl all these millions of URLs in order to discover the 301. By then we would be out of business. Best regards,
TalkInThePark0 -
Sitemap for dynamic website with over 10,000 pages
If I have a website with thousands of products, is it a good idea to create a sitemap for this website for the search engines where you show maybe 250 products on a page so it makes it easy for the search engine to find the part and also puts that part closer to the home page? Seems like google likes pages that are the closest to the home page (less clicks the better)
Technical SEO | | roundbrix0 -
What tool do you use to check for URLs not indexed?
What is your favorite tool for getting a report of URLs that are not cached/indexed in Google & Bing for an entire site? Basically I want a list of URLs not cached in Google and a seperate list for Bing. Thanks, Mark
Technical SEO | | elephantseo3