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@hjresearch ... Yes, everything is resolved now and has been for months. I'm in good standing with Bing/Yahoo and receiving Bing/Yahoo traffic to my website.
I posted earlier the steps I took to resolve the issue using Bing Webmaster Tools as my guide. You should read those steps, and take a very close look at your external backlinks to disavow the bad ones (remove from Bing). Find... pbsbluejay ... to read what I did.
Well, I received 4 emails today (5/30/23) from Bing that my site has been indexed and crawled which confirms some weeks ago when both my connected sites and web pages started showing up in Bing and Yahoo.
Here's what the email told me...
"Thank you for your patience!
I am happy to inform you that the issue related to your site http://internettvdotcom.com/ has been resolved.
If your site is not crawled or indexed, it may take up to 2-3 weeks for your site to serve again. Additionally, you can submit your URL using IndexNow feature to get them recrawled faster.
Please review our Webmaster Guidelines, especially the section Things to Avoid, to avoid this in the future.
Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions or concerns and I would be more than happy to assist.
Take care and stay safe!
I indicated all the things I did to get my site (2 connected sites) back on Bing and Yahoo in an earlier post. But I think the main problem was the external links that pointed to many bad URLs. I had to disavow them inside the Bing Webmaster Tools.
Go to BWTs >> SEO >> Backlinks >> Disavow Links
@pbsbluejay... UPDATE:
Back in February 2022, Bing deindexed both of my connected WordPress sites which are separate WordPress installs. The How-To-Videos is the addon site. After doing a lot of work in the past months to resolve many issues, Bing has finally started indexing both my connected websites and their posts.
I provided the steps I took to resolve the deindexing issue and posted them here prior to this Update post. I don't see that post so it looks like it hasn't been approved or perhaps it will never be posted here.
I believe the primary issues were my URLs and backlinks. There were many weird URLs from my websites showing up in Bing where I used the Bing Content Removal Tool which serves two things:
There were many backlinks pointing to spammy websites, non-working URLs, etc., that I disavowed. But I'll stop here. I broke it all down in my previous UPDATE post that hasn't been posted here.
One other thing...
If you are using WordPress, I recommend that you purchase the Yoast SEO Premium plugin for your site or sites. That plugin is designed to help prevent and resolve search engine issues. There's a lot of stuff you just don't want to be indexed and the plugin does that for you very easily.
For instance, the Yoast Premium plugin has an Advanced >> Optimization section that you need to enable just about everything listed under each of the following sub-sections...
The Bing Webmaster Tools is now showing the data including indexed URLs that were missing during the deindexing of my sites. I still have more errors on both sites to fix that I may get around to resolving. But right now, I'm just happy to see my sites indexed in Bing again. The question is for how long? Did I do a well enough job correcting issue for this to be permanent?
My UPDATE...
I removed many external backlinks pointing to spammy websites with a host of links, including pointing to websites that didn't load, no longer existed, redirected to another page, and the list goes on.
I used Bing's Content Removal tool which does the following...
Use this page to inform Bing of any content that you have removed due to a legal right, requirement, or otherwise. The Content Removal Tool allows you to notify Bing about two types of outdated content in our web results:
The problem is I'm only allowed to remove 10 URLs per day and the max is 50 per month. I have 100s of URLs to remove so this is taking me quite some time.
I updated and remove some stuff from my robots test file
Made sure my site is right
I have two connected WordPress sites built on separate installs--one is an addon. Bing deindexed both in Feb 2022. I had Yoast SEO plugin already installed on my main site (domain). I had the RankMath plugin installed on my addon site. I deactivated and deleted RankMath and installed the Yoast SEO version. I paid for the premium version to get all the features.
The Yoast SEO Premium has the Crawl optimization feature that does the following...
Make your site more efficient and more environmentally friendly by preventing search engines from crawling things they don’t need to, and by removing unused WordPress features.
I went in there and enable each and every feature with the exception of two features.
There was a lot to enable in each of the following sections...
I made both my websites/webpages load faster whereas I paid to install WP Rocket. I was already using Cloudflare. I worked on other things to make my site faster and resolve those issues that showed up in Google Webmasters Tools. I'm sure this helps me with Bing/Yahoo as well.
There were other minor issues I had to correct.
I still have URL issues to resolve. I don't know if I did enough so far for Bing to index both my sites again.
Inside the Bing Webmaster Tools >> Search Performance, I still have the following...
Clicks: 0
Impressions: 0
Avg. CTR: 0
Avg. Position: 0
Crawl Requests: 3.3K
Crawl Errors: 1.9K
Indexed Pages: 96 ==> This was 0 before I made all the changes above so I'm hoping that I'm on the right track to getting the deindex issue
resolved.
Bing Webmaster Tools is telling me that I have 38 ERROR : Blocked by robots.txt. This all points to my /goto/ directory that I blocked inside the robots text file. That directory contains all my affiliate links which Google accepts but I don't know why Bing doesn't. I contacted Bing support about this but I'm sure I will get no response as I tried repeatedly throughout the past months. Got a couple of replies with one telling me that my sites are penalized and for me to correct the issues.
There's also the 26 ERROR : Meta Description tag missing issue that points to URLs with ?s=. These are search tags when individuals search for stuff on my website. Bings want to me write a description for all those unwanted URLs with ?s=. I'm not going to do that. Yoast support told me their plugin helps block the ?s= URLs from search engines but they may still index them. For now, I'm leaving this alone.
Now that the officials finally replied to one of the many of my support messages and confirmed my WordPress site does have issues, I will go to work.
"Thank you for your patience!
After further review, it appears that your site http://internettvdotcom.com/ did not meet the standards set by Bing the last time it was crawled.
Bing constantly prioritizes the content to be indexed that will drive highest users satisfaction. Please follow Bing Webmaster Guidelines to better understand criteria for most valuable content."
I have many 404 URLs where those posts no longer exist on my site. I am currently using the Bing Content Removal tool to permanently remove them from Bing. I can only submit 10 URLs daily, so this will take me some time.
I'm just showing everyone what I'm doing to resolve the deindex issue and continue to update here as I go for all to see.
I conducted a Site Scan inside the Bing Webmasters Tool and found the following errors...
I have a lot of website search URLs and tag URLs that Bing picked up. They either point to 404 pages or tag posts that need to be blocked or need to redirect.
Meta Description tag missing
Error
150
NOTE: I'm not sure of this; I don't see an issue here. My Description tag is present when checking the Page Source. When I remove Rank Math and add Yoast SEO to my addon site, I'll see what happens. I was using Yoast SEO on my addon WordPress website also but replaced it with Rank Math prior to February 2022. Right after that Bing deindexed both sites in February 2022. Yoast support advise me not to use different SEO plugins for each of my connected sites.
Blocked by robots.txt
Error
73
Note: Yoast SEO support told me that I had too many block directives in my robots text file so I removed all of them and kept just the basic plus my sitemap and continued to block my /goto/ folder
Alt attribute for images is missing
Warning
248
NOTE: Will look into this but I always add the Alt attribute for my images.
Meta robots tag contains restrictive robots directives
Warning
204
NOTE: Yoast SEO support told me that I had too many block directives in my robots text file so I removed all of them and kept just the basic plus my sitemap and continued to block my /goto/ folder
Html size is too long
Warning
35
NOTE: Will look into this.
Title too long
Warning
8
NOTE: I was already aware of this but never did anything about it.
Meta Description too long or too short
Warning
1
NOTE: I corrected by making the description shorter
Yoast SEO support suggested that remove Rank Math from my addon WordPress site which is connected to my main site where the Yoast SEO plugin is installed and activated. I intend to do that as well.
Yoast SEO support also advised me to only include one sitemap for the main site in my robot.txt file. I had two sites for my addon WordPress site included also. I removed both of those sitemaps (1 & 2) for my addon site.
Also suggested that I do 301 redirects to referring posts and 410 redirects if there are no referring posts.
After months of trying to get a reply from Bing, I got an email from them recently...
"Thank you for your patience!
After further review, it appears that your site http://internettvdotcom.com/ did not meet the standards set by Bing the last time it was crawled.
Bing constantly prioritizes the content to be indexed that will drive highest users satisfaction. Please follow Bing Webmaster Guidelines to better understand criteria for most valuable content."
Inside Bing Webmasters Tools shows URLs with Crawling Issues (dead link - http 404-410) and URLs with other Issues...
Also, cdn.internettvdotcom.com (URL /root) points to Cloudflare...
internettvdotcom.com (my site) with various URLs and...
shop.internettvdotcom.com (shows many URLs). This was a sub-domain store that I removed and deleted some time ago. I will try to correct these issues.
@ShopEnergy ...Hello, just curious. Where did you get the data from? Both my sites were deindexed by Bing and have issues to correct. I got this response from Bing recently...
"Thank you for your patience!
After further review, it appears that your site http://internettvdotcom.com/ did not meet the standards set by Bing the last time it was crawled.
Bing constantly prioritizes the content to be indexed that will drive highest users satisfaction. Please follow Bing Webmaster Guidelines to better understand criteria for most valuable content."
Bing Webmaster Tools shows URLs with Crawling Issues (dead link - http 404-410) and URLs with other Issues...
cdn.internettvdotcom.com (URL /root) which points to Cloudflare, internettvdotcom.com (my site) with various URLs,
and shop.internettvdotcom.com (shows many URLs). This was a sub-domain store that I removed and deleted.
@ajayporwal8824 ... I received no response from them each time I requested support. It appears Bing is undermanned going by the message you received whereas no one else appears to have received the same reply. At least this tells us they are aware of the indexing/deindexing issues. Please keep us informed here should you hear back from them.
Still can't get Bing to index my websites that were indexed for years. Since Bing controls Yahoo's listings, my websites are not appearing in Yahoo as well.
My Bing Webmaster Tools shows the following...
1. You are a verified administrator - Nothing has changed there
2. Security & Privacy >> Copyright Removal Notices - Nothing listed
3. robots.txt Tester - No issue there; Nothing is being blocked, just the basic code...
User-Agent: *
Disallow:
[Sitemap]
4. Blocked URL - I only blocked the cached for many of my site's URLs showing, "Error 404 Not Found"
5. Site Scan shows: Pages Scanned: 1000; Errors: 561; Warnings: 652 - I have been working on this but don't see how my entire website was deindexed for... Meta Description tag missing, Blocked by robots.txt [not the case], Meta robots tag contains restrictive robots directives, Alt attribute for images is missing, Html size is too long, Title too long, Meta Description too long or too short, Title too short, More than one h1 tag, and H1 tag missing.
6. Sitemaps: I corrected/updated my sitemaps weeks ago; All is good
7. Site Explorer - Showing malware for the domain and every URL on my websites.
All my URLs show the following... Discovered but not crawled: The inspected URL is known to Bing but has some issues which are preventing indexation. We recommend you to follow Bing Webmaster Guidelines to increase your chances of indexation. If you think this URL should be indexed, click on Request indexing button. We will index it if we can fetch it and it adheres to Bing Webmaster guidelines. [I clicked the Request Indexing button and still no index]
Other URL issues appear in Site Explorer whereas I'm working on some of that but again I don't see how both my sites and all URLs are a problem to Bing and Yahoo.
Malware Scan at https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/: Domain and other URLs show 'No Malware Found & No Site is not Blacklisted' [Bing shows malware for all my URLs]. Google Search Console shows no malware at all. So I take this as all external backlinks pointing to websites and posts/pages have no malware either.
I have contacted Bing support repeatedly with no response from them. I recall having a similar issue with Bing years ago. They responded quickly and resolved the issue which wasn't my website. Something triggered an alarm on their end. Once they reset things on their end, my website got indexed again.
If anyone has a solution or path to correcting the issue, my ears are open. But I don't think the issue has to do with my websites. I'm leaning more towards the issue being on Bing's side.
Same thing here...
Both my sites were deindexed in Bing and Yahoo over 6 months ago and I didn't know it until now. Both were indexed for years. However, both sites are indexed in Google. You would have thought it would be the other way around if there was some kind of penalty which I don't have the foggiest idea if Bing/Yahoo penalized my sites. Nothing indicates a penalty inside my Bing Webmaster Tools.
It appeared the sitemaps to both my sites needed to be updated and so I did that and resubmitted both sitemaps. It's been days now and both sites are still not indexed in Bing and Yahoo. I sent a support message twice within the week with no response from them. It never took them this long to reply back to me in the past.