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.
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 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 -
What is the best way to handle annual events on a website?
Every year our company has a user conference with between 300 - 400 attendees. I've just begun giving the event more of a presence on our website. I'm wondering, what is the best way to handle highlights from previous years? Would it be to create an archive (e.g. www.companyname.com/eventname/2015) while constantly updating the main landing page to promote the current event? We also use an event website (cvent) to handle our registrations. So once we have an agenda for the current years event I do a temporary redirect from the main landing page to the registration website. I don't really like this practice and I feel like it might be better to keep all of the info on the main domain. Wondering if anybody has any opinions or feedback on that process as well. Just looking for best practices or what others have done and have had success with.
Web Design | | Brando161 -
Duplicate Title Issues using # anchor tags
Our homepage navigation uses anchor tags (?TabNumb=1#, ?TabNumb=1# etc) rather than directly linking to different pages to decrease load time (and simplify the build process I owuld imagine). These anchor links are showing up as duplicate titles in Moz. I am pretty sure if I were to use noindex or rel tags, that could have a negative affect on my search results. Any way to tackle this outside of a complete redesign of the structure? http://www.dedoose.com/about-us/?TabNum=2# as an example
Web Design | | sbnjl0 -
Traffic flow going through homepage, /default.aspx, and /index.htm - How do I fix this?
In the Google Analytics visitor flow section, most of my traffic is starting off on the homepage, but a significant portion somehow is being directed to /default.aspx, as well as a minor fraction at /index.htm - see the attached image for what this looks like. My questions are, why is this happening, is it negatively affecting the site, and should I just fix it through a filter in Analytics or consult IT? Navigating to the /default.aspx page in the address bar simply returns a blank screen. Any idea of what's going on here? The logo in the top left corner of the site directs to /index.htm, so I think I have that issue solved, but /default.aspx is definitely stumping me. The server currently runs on Apache, though I don't know if it always did. My standard method of simply Googling the problem didn't give me any definitive answers, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Q12QqpC.jpg
Web Design | | BD690 -
Site structure and blog tags for local with five locations
I have a client who has five locations. Their current web site was structured very well for the pre-penguin and Panda world. However it does not seem to do as well after these changes. I believe it would serve them both with their customers as well as on Google if they localized the site for each location. Currently all the content on the site if focused on one location that is in the largest metro. On the content side we have a plan to produce local content and blogs for each location. My questions are how to go about structuring the site map and blogs to provide the most local juice. I was also wondering how to properly mark up a site with a main trunk and five local branches. I am also trying to figure out how to structure the tags on the blog. On the site map itself I was planning on maintaining all the content as well as the older blogs in the main trunk of the web site. Under this trunk there is a locations page that currently goes to five pages that simply have an address as well as a bulletin board of upcoming events. The blog is directly off the main page with no tie to any location. Here are my thoughts on what I think we should do: I believe we should create a mini web site starting at the location page that has specific content and navigation related to each location. That the content should focus on the specifics of that area and what would serve that clientele the best. We should add to each branch location based on the key words and competition in that area. The blog off the main web site should continue to house the general categories that are already there as well as any other general posts. I think we should add a link to each store page with a location specific blog in each mini location site. Each mini location site should have it's own blog with specific blogs targeted towards the local market. This local blog would also feed in the general blogs from the "trunk" as they are posted. Relating back to my original questions: is what I outlined the right approach or is there a more effective way to do this? Is there any special mark up I should do to tell the directories what to do? How do I structure the tags for the blog? I was thinking of a structure like this: General blog/category/subject under the main structure : local blog/category/subject Any ideas of input on this? Ron
Web Design | | Ron_McCabe1 -
Does it do harm if you add a rel="canonical" tag on a page that doesn't need it?
If a page is clearly unique and there is obviously no canonical tag needed, does it hurt anything if one has been added?
Web Design | | jaychow0 -
Google Tag Manager
I recently discovered the Google Tag Manager and I am in the process of updating many of my websites with this feature. I am using Tag Manager to mange Google Analytics, Google Remarketing, Alive Chat, Woopra, etc. I have one question about how Tag Manager actually works. As best I can tell, the Tag Manager code snippet that I insert into my web pages is the same for all my websites and does not include a unique ID. If that is the case, then Tag Manager must search all the URLs in the TM database to find a match. What is to stop someone else from adding some rules for my URLs to their containers? I expect Google has a method to ensure proper matching, but I'm not clear on how that is enforced. Best,
Web Design | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
H1 Tags with Location
Hi Everyone, I have a question about trying to get location information into title tags without having it look spammy. What I've been trying is something like this: h1 { font-size:18px; } .h1_sub { font-size:10px; } Why Choose My Company Minnesota Website Design | Minneapolis Web Development I'm not sure if that is a good thing to do or not as everything is inside the h1 tag and visible to the engines however it makes it less prominent on the page and gives a better layout. You can see it at www.mltgroup.com/company.php Thanks
Web Design | | MLTGroup0