Dear Anders Delhag
Thank you for posting in the Microsoft community.
It is indeed puzzling that your Swedish site has disappeared from Bing search results, and from your description, there could be multiple factors involved (e.g. hreflang implementation issues, duplicate content, indexing status, etc.).
Here are some possible causes and solutions to help you get your Swedish site back in Bing's search results.
Analysis of possible causes
1. Hreflang tagging issues
You mentioned that the hreflang tags were previously configured incorrectly, which may have caused Bing to treat the Swedish and Norwegian sites as duplicate content and thus choose to index only one version (i.e. the Norwegian site).
o Even though you have now fixed the hreflang tags, Bing may not have fully recrawled and updated the index.
2. Duplicate content or too much similarity
Swedish and Norwegian are very similar, and if both sites have highly similar content, Bing may mistake it for duplicate content and prioritize showing the Norwegian site.
3. Indexing problems
Bing may have removed the Swedish site from its index, causing it to no longer show up in search results.
This may be due to technical problems (e.g., incorrect submission of sitemaps, robots.txt blocking crawling) or Bing's algorithmic misjudgment.
4. Brand name conflicts
If the Norwegian site is considered more relevant in Bing's algorithm (e.g. because of more recent activity), it may override the Swedish site's branded search results.
5. Bing Webmaster Tools configuration issues
If the Swedish site and the Norwegian site have conflicting attributes or validations, this may affect Bing's crawling and indexing of the sites
Checking the correctness of hreflang tags
Make sure that the implementation of hreflang tags is completely correct, including:
The hreflang tags on each page contain mutual pointers to the Swedish and Norwegian sites.
The tags are formatted correctly, e.g:
Use Google's Hreflang Tags Testing Tool or Bing's tool to check if the tags are correct.
Checking Indexing Status
In Bing Webmaster Tools, check the index coverage of the Swedish website:
Log in to Bing Webmaster Tools and select the properties of the Swedish website.
View the Site Overview or URL Check to confirm whether any URLs are indexed by Bing.
If the URLs are not indexed, use the “URL Submission” feature to manually submit key pages.
Check indexing using Bing search commands:
Search for site:example.se to see if any pages are indexed.
If there are no results, the site may have been de-indexed.
Improve content differentiation
If the content on the Swedish and Norwegian websites is very similar, try the following:
Modify the page titles and meta descriptions to make them more unique and specific to the Swedish market.
Add unique localized content, such as offers, news or services for Swedish users.
Ensure that there is a clear language identifier on the page (e.g. lang=“sv” for Swedish)
Submit a Reindexing Request
If you have fixed the hreflang tag and sitemap, you can submit a reindexing request through Bing Webmaster Tools:
Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools.
Go to Swedish Site Properties.
Find the “Revalidate site” or “Request recapture” feature in “Site settings”.
Finally, if Bing Support does not respond to your ticket, try the following:
Contact support through Bing Webmaster Tools:
Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools.
Go to Help and Support and submit a new ticket
Best Wish
Shawn.Z-MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist
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