How to Check Bing Webmaster Tools for Crawl and Indexing Errors

Last updated: October 10, 2026

Key Takeaways

• Check crawl problems in Crawl Information, then review sample URLs, response codes, and crawl dates.
• Check indexing problems with URL Inspection and index reports, then read Bing’s exclusion reason.
• Start with 404, 5xx, robots.txt, noindex, canonical, and soft 404 issues because they explain many failures.
• The report can look clean while indexing still fails because Bing may follow a different signal.

If pages are missing from Bing, I would start in Bing Webmaster Tools, open the site’s reports, and check two places first: crawl issues and URL inspection/indexing status. This guide explains how to check Bing Webmaster Tools for crawl and indexing errors so you can find the cause quickly. That answers the practical question behind most searches on this topic, which is usually not “what is Bing Webmaster Tools?” but “why is Bing not crawling or indexing my pages, and where do I see the error?”

What Bing Webmaster Tools shows when crawl or indexing goes wrong

Bing Webmaster Tools shows you two different kinds of trouble: crawl problems, where Bingbot cannot fetch a page cleanly, and indexing problems, where Bing can crawl a URL but still decide not to add it to the index. Those are not the same failure, and if you are unsure which one you have, consult a SEO or technical specialist and Bing’s documentation before changing sitewide settings.

I would separate the checks this way because the fix changes depending on the report. A crawl error often points to server response codes, robots rules, DNS trouble, or timeouts. An indexing miss may point to noindex tags, canonical conflicts, duplicate content, soft 404s, thin pages, or pages Bing sees as low value. The Bing Webmaster Tools help documentation and Bing’s own URL Inspection feature are the right places to confirm which problem you actually have.

A generic article often stops at “look for errors.” That is too vague to help. You want the specific signal: the URL was never discovered, was discovered but blocked, was crawled but excluded, or was crawled and then dropped. Bing’s reports are useful precisely because they let you sort those cases before you waste time changing the wrong thing.

For the rest of this guide, I’ll keep the emphasis on the path inside the tool, the exact reports to open, and the meaning of the error types you are most likely to see. If you manage a small site, a CMS site, or a site with a few thousand URLs, this is the part that saves the most time.

How do I check crawl errors in Bing Webmaster Tools?

You check crawl errors in the Crawl Information section of Bing Webmaster Tools, then drill into the URL examples, response codes, and last crawl dates. In practice, that is usually the quickest way to see whether Bingbot is hitting 404s, 5xx errors, redirect loops, blocked resources, or timeouts, but you should confirm the pattern rather than assume a single example tells the whole story.

Start by signing in to Bing Webmaster Tools and selecting the property you want to audit. Then open the reports related to crawling. Bing has changed labels over time, so the exact menu name can vary, but the destination is the crawl diagnostics area, not the performance graphs. Look for a report that groups URLs by response type or crawl failure. The useful part is not the total count alone; it is the list of affected URLs and the error pattern behind them.

The first filter I would use is the response code. A cluster of 404s usually means deleted URLs, bad internal links, or stale XML sitemap entries. A cluster of 5xx errors points to server instability or load problems. A 403 or blocked response suggests access control, bot filtering, or misconfigured rules. If the report shows “timeout” or “connection refused,” that is often infrastructure, not content.

Then check whether the error is isolated or repeating across a directory. One broken URL is a cleanup task. Fifty broken URLs in the same folder can mean a template or routing problem. Bingbot reports are most useful when they show the pattern, not just the symptom.

One detail many people miss: a URL can be crawl-error-free today and still be wrong tomorrow if the sitemap keeps submitting dead pages. If Bing Webmaster Tools shows the same 404s after you have removed them from your sitemap and internal links, I would look for another source still generating them.

How do I check indexing errors in Bing Webmaster Tools?

You check indexing errors by using URL Inspection and the index-related reports, then reading Bing’s reason for exclusion instead of guessing from the page title or a site: search result. If the wording is unclear, consult a specialist or Bing’s own help pages before changing templates or canonicals sitewide.

Open URL Inspection for a specific page first. This is the most direct test because it usually shows the current crawl status, canonical choice, indexing eligibility, and the reason Bing may not have indexed the page. If a page is not indexed, the inspection result matters more than the search snippet. Bing may show that the page is blocked by robots.txt, marked noindex, canonicalized elsewhere, or treated as duplicate or soft 404 content.

Then move to the indexing or pages report, if available in your property view. The value there is scale. URL Inspection tells you about one page. The report tells you whether the same issue is affecting 10 URLs or 10,000. If a whole template section is excluded, that is the kind of pattern you want to see early.

The most common indexing traps are boring but expensive: a noindex meta tag left on a production template, a canonical tag pointing to the wrong version, a disallow rule that blocks important folders, or content so thin that Bing treats it as low value. A lot of sites have all four problems at once. That is why I prefer to inspect a sample URL from each template, not just the homepage.

If the page is indexed but not ranking, that is a different conversation. This article is about crawl and indexing errors, so the question is not “why am I on page two?” It is “why is Bing not including the page at all, or why is it seeing the wrong version?”

What error types should I look for first?

I would look for 404, 5xx, blocked by robots.txt, noindex, canonical mismatch, and soft 404 first because those are the errors that usually explain most indexing failures. Those six categories cover the majority of practical problems I see site owners miss when they only glance at the dashboard.

A 404 means Bing found a URL that no longer exists. If the URL should be gone, that is fine as long as internal links and sitemap entries are cleaned up. If the URL should exist, the problem is worse: broken routing, wrong permalink settings, or a server rewrite issue.

A 5xx code means the server failed to answer correctly. That is a crawl problem first and an indexing problem second. If Bingbot keeps getting server failures, it may stop retrying as often.

A robots.txt block tells Bing not to crawl the page or folder. That is useful when intentional, harmful when accidental. A single misplaced disallow line can hide an entire section.

A noindex directive is explicit. If the page should rank, it should not carry noindex in the meta robots tag or HTTP header.

A canonical mismatch means Bing is being told another URL is the preferred version. This is normal on duplicate pages, but wrong canonicals can silently remove the page you wanted indexed.

A soft 404 is easy to miss because the page returns 200 OK, but the content looks empty, irrelevant, or like a missing-page template. Bing may treat it as not worth indexing even though the server says the page exists, so if the status is unclear, consult a technical SEO professional and check Bing’s guidance. According to Google Search Central, soft 404s are pages that look missing to search engines even when they return success codes. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/soft-404-errors

What went wrong when the report looks “clean,” but pages still do not index?

The report can look clean while indexing still fails because Bing may be following a different signal than the one you are checking. That usually happens when the page is technically crawlable but still excluded for content, canonical, duplication, or site quality reasons.

This is the failure mode that frustrates most site owners. They see no obvious crawl errors, no glaring server outage, and no big red alert in the dashboard. Then they assume Bing is broken. More often, the problem is that the page sends conflicting signals.

A page can return 200 OK and still not index if it carries noindex, points to another canonical, appears duplicated across many URLs, or looks like a thin placeholder. A product page with almost no unique copy, a location page copied from another branch, or a tag archive with little substance can all fall into this category. None of those look like “errors” in the narrow technical sense, but Bing may still exclude them.

This is also where sitemap quality matters. If the sitemap includes pages you would not want indexed, or if it leaves out your important pages, Bing gets a distorted picture of what matters. A clean crawl report does not fix bad site architecture. It only means Bing can fetch the pages you exposed.

I would treat this as the most expensive blind spot in Bing Webmaster Tools because it burns time on the wrong fix. People resubmit URLs, change titles, or ask for recrawls when the real problem is that the content does not give Bing a reason to index the page in the first place.

How do I confirm whether the problem is Bing or my site?

You confirm that by comparing the URL Inspection result, the crawl report, the page source, and the server response for the same URL. If all four point in the same direction, the problem is probably on the site side, not Bing’s side.

First, inspect the URL in Bing Webmaster Tools. Note whether Bing says the page is crawlable, indexed, excluded, canonicalized elsewhere, or blocked. Then open the page’s HTML source and check for noindex, canonical tags, or redirects. After that, verify the response code with whatever server or HTTP checking tool your team uses. A page that says “200” in the browser can still send a different response to bots or a different canonical in the HTML head.

If Bing says the URL is blocked by robots.txt, confirm the exact rule. If it says the page is excluded because of noindex, check whether the tag is on the live template or injected by a plugin or header. If it says canonicalized elsewhere, make sure the canonical target is the page you truly want indexed, not a staging URL, variant, or parameterized version.

I would be cautious about blaming Bing when the site has multiple versions of the same page, mixed redirects, or inconsistent headers. Those problems are common on CMS platforms, ecommerce systems, and multilingual sites. Bing is reading the signals you give it. When those signals conflict, exclusion is a normal outcome.

This is also the point where I would escalate to a developer if the same error repeats across many URLs. A one-off fix is easy. A template or server rule affecting 500 pages is a deployment problem.

What should I fix first after I find the error?

You should fix the error that blocks discovery or creates the widest sitewide impact first, usually robots.txt blocks, noindex tags, 5xx errors, or bad canonicals. That order matters because a single sitewide directive can suppress hundreds of URLs at once.

My order would be simple:

1. Remove accidental noindex or disallow rules from important pages.
2. Fix 5xx errors and timeout problems.
3. Correct wrong canonicals.
4. Repair internal links and sitemap entries that point to dead URLs.
5. Clean up thin, duplicate, or placeholder pages that Bing has little reason to index.

This sequence works because it handles the broadest failure before the narrow one. If your site is accidentally blocking an entire directory, there is no point polishing one page’s title tag. If the server is unstable, content tweaks do not matter until the crawl is reliable. If canonicals are wrong, Bing may keep choosing the wrong URL no matter how often you request indexing.

The part many people skip is validation after the fix. Re-check the same URL in Bing Webmaster Tools, then look for the status change. If the problem was a noindex tag, Bing may need time to recrawl before the report updates. If it was a 5xx or robots issue, the status should eventually change once Bing sees a successful crawl.

I would not expect instant recovery. Search systems move on their own crawl schedule, and that schedule is outside your control. What you can control is whether the report now shows a clean path to the page.

Where do I find the right Bing help pages and standards references?

You should use Bing’s own Webmaster Tools documentation and Microsoft’s support pages as the primary reference, then cross-check crawl and indexing behavior against the page source and HTTP standards. For the technical side, the relevant standards include robots exclusions, meta robots directives, canonicalization, and HTTP response codes.

If you want the official product documentation, start with Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools help content and URL Inspection documentation on Microsoft Learn or the Bing Webmaster portal. Those pages explain the tool labels and report meanings better than generic SEO blog posts. For technical interpretation, the key standards are the robots.txt exclusion standard, the meta robots directives used by search engines, and the HTTP status code family. Google Search Central’s robots.txt documentation is also useful for understanding how search bots interpret exclusions. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro

I would especially trust official sources when a report label changes or when Bing updates how it presents data. Third-party articles often lag behind the interface. That matters because a stale screenshot can send you to the wrong menu and make a simple issue look harder than it is.

This is also where I would resist over-reading any one report. Bing Webmaster Tools is a diagnostic layer, not the site itself. The real fix comes from aligning the tool’s message with the page source, server response, and site structure. For canonical behavior, the Google Search Central canonicalization guide is a useful standards reference. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/consolidate-duplicate-urls

FAQ

How long does it take for Bing Webmaster Tools to show a fix?
It depends on crawl frequency and the type of issue, but I would expect a delay rather than an immediate update. A removed noindex tag or fixed robots rule still needs Bing to recrawl the URL.

Can a page be crawled but not indexed in Bing?
Yes. A page can return 200 OK and still be excluded because of noindex, canonical signals, duplication, or low-value content.

Should I use URL Inspection or the crawl reports first?
Use URL Inspection for one URL and crawl reports for patterns. I would start with Inspection when one page is missing, then move to reports when many URLs are affected.

What is the most common mistake people make in Bing Webmaster Tools?
They look for one “Bing error” instead of checking the actual cause: robots blocking, noindex, canonicals, or server failures.

Drafted with AI; not yet reviewed by a person.