Bing Indexation and handling of X-ROBOTS tag or AngularJS

[AU-SEO]

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....

[Everett]

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.

[AU-SEO]

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!

[Everett]

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.

[AU-SEO]

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.

[AU-SEO]

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!

[Everett]

Thank you for the update Kavit.