Hi, We got completely dropped out of the Bing index 10 days ago and all our efforts in getting an answer on why this happened or how this can be fixed are not answered by Bing Support.
We run a technology news and shopping Magazine since over 10 years and have been in Bing since it exists.
As Bing powers Yahoo, we now run only on Google traffic.
Any help is very much appreciated.
websitehandyman
11:01 am on Jan 17, 2012 (gmt 0)
Reblaus, after that I got email from Product Group saying they would be in touch within 84 hours. A week later the saud 24 hours but that was xmas. So I waited to last week and replied asking why it's take so long when they said 24 hours.
I've had another reply, "One of the sites linked to your page has a link for a link marketing site and although they may claim that the links are spam-free, this may not exactly be true."
I asked about my other sites too "Your other domains may have dropped off from Bing because of the algorithm as your original domain has been blocked because of the nature of its back links."
I've had five or 6 replies now and after each I look at my sites and make changes, I've even taken down my portfolio which gets me work. But never have they given any feedback on if the are re-evaluating each time or just going over the same info they have when the site was blocked in Nov. I've now asked them to confirm evaluation.
engine
11:46 am on Jan 17, 2012 (gmt 0)
>blocked because of the nature of its back links."
I'd take a long hard look at my backlinks if that was me.
nomis5
12:17 pm on Jan 17, 2012 (gmt 0)
One of the sites linked to your page has a link for a link marketing site and although they may claim that the links are spam-free, this may not exactly be true.
If that really is the case it is a template for getting any site banned from Bing, plus all the other sites that person owns?!
If that's the case, it's ridiculously easy to damage other competing sites as far as Bing is concerned.
websitehandyman
12:52 pm on Jan 17, 2012 (gmt 0)
Nomis5, point point exactly and the is a site owner who would do that to me because they are already leaching off my domain name. Looked into the legel side and it would cost a minimum of £1,000 to get to arbitration.
engine, there was me thinking I had missed last weeked episode of Sherlock ;-)
engine
2:14 pm on Jan 17, 2012 (gmt 0)
>there was me thinking I had missed last weeked episode of Sherlock
Hehe, I wish I was that good! What a great show - can't wait for the next three.
Seriously, where did those backlinks come from? Did you do them, or was it automated, or was it malicious? Those are the questions i'd want to know. Depending on the type of link, just like asking for a link, you could try asking for link removal. Where do the links point, home page or subfolder? If it's to a specific page, can you remove/rename the page so the link is broken?
I'd try all those things and wouldn't go down the legal side without trying that first.
Clearly, Bing seems to have blacklisted that neigbourhood as bad.
websitehandyman
2:56 pm on Jan 17, 2012 (gmt 0)
engine, I've not seen the last one yet but they me its better the others. Don't tell I'll maybe watch it tonight.
As I have said before this was blocked in Nov last year. I don't think I want to go down the road of asking people NOT to link to me thats against my values. Bing support don't give a clear and procice answer as to were the links are, in the last email the even talked about links in and out when I thought I had nailed them down to links in. It all seems fishy to me.
I was assuming the this "bad neighourhood" was indeed one of my own sites. Bing said I should dissacoicate myself from them. If it was one of my sites I would be even more amazed that this one was blocked. Bad quality is not a reason to block ;-)
Anyway I've spent the last 2 day deleting all cross linking on my server even if I don't own the site. I've even deleted my portfolio. Now as far as I know I do not link to any of my own sites.
I also rewrote the privacy statment on the blocked site to include disassociation from any site linking in or out and domains with similar names.
I really don't know what more I can do and I'm sure I'll now have to sell off 5 or 6 domains or sites even once they are unblocked.
achean
5:07 pm on Jan 17, 2012 (gmt 0)
Bing recently/suddenly stopped crawling one specific directory on our site, which had previously been crawled very actively and received a lot of traffic. Anyone else seeing anything like that? We also got what appears to be a bogus malware report in webmaster tools. More at [webmasterworld.com ].
websitehandyman
9:41 am on Jan 26, 2012 (gmt 0)
Well I think I've come to the end of the road with Bing search engine.
Having not heard back in a few days I requested a reconsideration thinking all I had done should be enough. I got the same reply back 3 days later - "Unfortunately, the present SPAM block will remain against this website as many of the website domains inlinks are spammy/thin affiliate sites which offer little value plus lacking unique content."
So as it stand folks my sites can be blocked because your site is rubbish. Or indeed your site can be blocked because my site is rubbish. All it takes is a link in. I am now off to fiverr.com to pay some 5 year to backlink my competitors sites as much as they can :-)
To recap, this is a Google ranked 3 site that gets over 400 unique visitors a day. I have complied the best I could, I've checked all the back links I can find and removed any I had association with.
I have also spent long hours checking as many as I could to see if they were indexed in Bing. The thinking being if the linked in site had been blocked then that might be one of the site throwing a shadow over my site. As far as I can see NONE of the current back linked sites are NOT indexed in Bing and their for NONE are banned only mine.
So how can a site be deemed as spam and not be blocked, but link into mine and cause mine to be blocked ?
It all stinks and although it won't make any difference to them I will be having nothing to do with Bing from now on. I'll delete my account and make sure they can't parse any of my content. If they do ignore the robots setting I put in place then I will report their robot as rouge.
In effect I will make a point of giving Bing bad press whenever I can. It's a great pity as I had hoped they might bring some pressure on Google and so I was a big supporter of Bing in the past.
engine
9:49 am on Jan 26, 2012 (gmt 0)
Is that an automated reply from Bing, or a human? If it's a human, do you believe they actually checked your changes?
I'd wait a while until the site got re-visited, and Bing updates the index. That may be a few months, but you've got nothing to lose and everything to gain.
websitehandyman
10:27 am on Jan 26, 2012 (gmt 0)
Human reply using cut and paste I suspect.
Did they check ? I don't know, they didn't say.
No point waiting, it's a block and only a manuel unblock with work. I have already said if they want to devalue it fine as I can work on that. I can then see the results of my efforts myself. I'm not going to request reconcideration everytime I get one of the 5,000 backlinks removed.
bingdude
7:27 pm on Jan 31, 2012 (gmt 0)
websitehandyman - hit me with a private message and give me the domain that's having the issue here.
Not stating the outcome will be different, but I can check with the team here to get their direct take on it. The support folks pass those emails you sent in to the same teams, but sometimes you get a bit more info taking a personal route. ;)
Now, a couple of points:
1 - you allude to action being taken against you, by Bing, at the potential request of others (DCMA). While I cannot comment on if this is the cas eor not, I'm pretty sure had someone taken action against your domain, you'd be notified of it. That's why "whois" info needs to be accurate.
2 - links pointing at your site do have an impact on how you rank. But, if someone took an action to link negative sites to your own, that type of pattern would pop up as obvious to us, and we'd deprecate the value of the links (in this exmaple, the negative value).
3 - and please tell me you are not actually going to go pay to have bad links built to competing sites. All I can suggest is to not do this.
websitehandyman
7:51 pm on Jan 31, 2012 (gmt 0)
PM sent dude, don't worry I don't do such things, However, I bloke only lives a few miles away so I might go and break his legs :-)
Whois is clear, I've never bought backlinks I don't need to when you see the site you'll understand why.
websitehandyman
12:18 pm on Feb 6, 2012 (gmt 0)
Well at least Google thinks the site is worth something, they just upped the page ranking to 4/10
SEOPTI
2:32 am on Feb 7, 2012 (gmt 0)
@websitehandyman: Off topic note: PR by no means is a sign of quality.
reblaus
8:50 am on Feb 14, 2012 (gmt 0)
hallelujah!
after 2 1/2 months we just got feedback from bing support that the spam block was lifted. no reason given why it was there in the first place, but its save to assume that it was our Cyber Monday coverage. For some reason we did not get unblocked like all other black friday sites that got hit with a block back in November.
Apparently it now takes 3-5 weeks to build new reputation profile for the site. There is no telling if we actually get back to where we have been in Bing.
