Site gone from Bing's SERP in a day! :)

bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOG
edited July 21 in Technical

This is an interesting problem I've never faced before, not could help myself by googling.

All the websites from bikegremlin.com domain (bike.bikegremlin.com, io.bikegremlin.com etc.) are gone from Bing's SERP starting from June 26th 2022. Zero, zilch.

DuckDuckGo does the same, while Google and Yandex show all the pages normaly in their serches.

Bing's dashboard shows no errors (robots, page test, live URL test etc.), except for the Site Scan. Site scan returns "Error 400-499".

Full report that I'll update if I get any more ideas, or hear from Bing's support:

Microsoft Bing – site gone from SERP overnight!

If anyone has any ideas to try, I'm all ears. :)

BikeGremlin I/O
Mostly WordPress ™

Comments

  • havochavoc OG

    Clearly some IT gremlins at play!

    ...sorry couldn't help myself

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  • armandorgarmandorg Services Provider

    I’ve seen such issues before on a client which got reported plenty of times by his competitors on search engines, for different reasons. Remembered that got removed from Bing and later on added after contacting support.

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  • vyasvyas OGContent Writer

    Something I was reading up today coincidentally...

    look up Bing Indexnow.
    Might be a dead end, or might lead to a solution. YMMV

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  • ralfralf

    IIRC years ago DuckDuckGo was using Bing's backend when they first launched, so maybe that's still the case and would explain why both exhibit the same behaviour.

    Thanked by (1)bikegremlin
  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOG

    @vyas said:
    Something I was reading up today coincidentally...

    look up Bing Indexnow.
    Might be a dead end, or might lead to a solution. YMMV

    Hmm, I think my contents are indexed (according to Bing's dashboard and previous SERPs), it's just removed from SERP as of recently.

    BikeGremlin I/O
    Mostly WordPress ™

  • DanielDaniel OG
    edited July 22

    @ralf said:
    IIRC years ago DuckDuckGo was using Bing's backend when they first launched, so maybe that's still the case and would explain why both exhibit the same behaviour.

    They still use Bing. Pretty much every search engine that isn't Google uses Bing in some way, as Bing is the largest search engine that has an official public search API that other companies can use (whereas Google does not have one). Voice assistants like Alexa also also use Bing.

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  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOG
    edited July 22

    @Daniel said:

    @ralf said:
    IIRC years ago DuckDuckGo was using Bing's backend when they first launched, so maybe that's still the case and would explain why both exhibit the same behaviour.

    They still use Bing. Pretty much every search engine that isn't Google uses Bing in some way, as Bing is the largest search engine that has an official public search API that other companies can use (whereas Google does not have one). Voice assistants like Alexa also also use Bing.

    Yup. Roughly 5 - 10 % traffic from those combined (about 70 - 80 % from Google).

    Still, it's strange - and it sucks.

    BikeGremlin I/O
    Mostly WordPress ™

  • chrischris

    @bikegremlin said:

    @Daniel said:

    @ralf said:
    IIRC years ago DuckDuckGo was using Bing's backend when they first launched, so maybe that's still the case and would explain why both exhibit the same behaviour.

    They still use Bing. Pretty much every search engine that isn't Google uses Bing in some way, as Bing is the largest search engine that has an official public search API that other companies can use (whereas Google does not have one). Voice assistants like Alexa also also use Bing.

    Yup. Roughly 5 - 10 % traffic from those combined (about 70 - 80 % from Google).

    Still, it's strange - and it sucks.

    I shall check all mine later!

    I sometimes worry that I'm so correct in all I say, that there might be something wrong with me

  • jmaxwelljmaxwell

    @armandorg said:
    I’ve seen such issues before on a client which got reported plenty of times by his competitors on search engines, for different reasons. Remembered that got removed from Bing and later on added after contacting support.

    Any more details on this contacting support part?

    Why?

  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOG

    I've used this situation to check out some Google alternatives.

    Made a list of search engines that use Bing (Bing copies basically), followed by a list of search engines that seem to be independent.

    Bing is still "working on this and keeping me informed." :)

    BikeGremlin I/O
    Mostly WordPress ™

  • nfnnfn
    edited July 28

    Do you have Super Bot Mode enabled in Cloudflare?

    Thanked by (1)bikegremlin
  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOG
    edited July 28

    @nfn said:
    Do you have Super Bot Mode enabled in Cloudflare?

    No. But a good call - that's what CF support first asked.

    Not all the CF sites are affected - though all used the same CF setup.
    Only one domain. So it may not be CF-related at all.
    Though one can never be certain - too many stuff in stack, relying on each other.
    I'm surprised it ever works at all in the first place. :)

    BikeGremlin I/O
    Mostly WordPress ™

  • nfnnfn
    edited July 28

    @bikegremlin said:

    @nfn said:
    Do you have Super Bot Mode enabled in Cloudflare?

    No. But a good call - that's what CF support first asked.

    Not all the CF sites are affected - though all used the same CF setup.
    Only one domain. So it may not be CF-related at all.
    Though one can never be certain - too many stuff in stack, relying on each other.
    I'm surprised it ever works at all in the first place. :)

    I have the same problem and made some analysis at bing webmaster to discover that Super Bot Mode is blocking Bing:

    https://community.cloudflare.com/t/super-bot-mode-blocking-bing-bot-from-reading-sitemaps/316208

    You can test this here: https://www.bing.com/webmasters/sitescan

  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOG
    edited July 28

    @nfn said:

    @bikegremlin said:

    @nfn said:
    Do you have Super Bot Mode enabled in Cloudflare?

    No. But a good call - that's what CF support first asked.

    Not all the CF sites are affected - though all used the same CF setup.
    Only one domain. So it may not be CF-related at all.
    Though one can never be certain - too many stuff in stack, relying on each other.
    I'm surprised it ever works at all in the first place. :)

    I have the same problem and made some analysis at bing webmaster to discover that Super Bot Mode is blocking Bing:

    https://community.cloudflare.com/t/super-bot-mode-blocking-bing-bot-from-reading-sitemaps/316208

    You can test this here: https://www.bing.com/webmasters/sitescan

    I have superbot disabled.
    Site Scan doesn't work on both affected and unaffected websites. :)
    Go figure...

    Relayed all the info to Bing's support.

    BikeGremlin I/O
    Mostly WordPress ™

  • niceboyniceboy

    Any updates on this?

    Did you check your server logs for issues when you performed Bing Site Scan?

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  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOG
    edited August 1

    @niceboy said:
    Any updates on this?

    Did you check your server logs for issues when you performed Bing Site Scan?

    Couldn't find anything - not in Cloudflare WAF logs or in server logs.
    Contacted both Bing, and Cloudflare support.

    However, I host several websites with the same Cloudflare setup, and the same hosting provider, yet only one domain is affected (with more than one website).
    That's why I think this is a Bing-induced problem and probably has nothing to do with Cloudflare or hosting.

    I'm keeping the Bing website removal article up-to-date with any info.

    BikeGremlin I/O
    Mostly WordPress ™

  • ralfralf

    @bikegremlin got linked to on Hacker News!
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32361648

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  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOG

    @ralf said:
    @bikegremlin got linked to on Hacker News!
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32361648

    Seems like the home page is back to Bing & Co.
    But zero search queries show any of my articles - so practically it’s still gone from Bing.

    We’ll see if that changes.

    Thanked by (1)MikePT

    BikeGremlin I/O
    Mostly WordPress ™

  • MikePTMikePT Hosting ProviderOGServices Provider

    @ralf said:
    @bikegremlin got linked to on Hacker News!
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32361648

    He deserves it. Writes amazingly well and about interesting stuff!

    Thanked by (1)bikegremlin
  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOG

    Got an email from Bing that my websites were blocked, and upon review, they decided to lift the block - so it should all be fine in about 3 weeks. A bit more info:
    Manual unblock?

    We'll know by September, I suppose.

    Thanked by (1)MikePT

    BikeGremlin I/O
    Mostly WordPress ™

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