Bing Webmaster Tools shows URLs “Indexed” and “Live URL can be indexed” but Bing Search returns zero results for site: and url:

Question

Hi team,

I’m trying to understand a mismatch between Bing Webmaster Tools and public Bing Search for a WordPress site.

Summary

• Bing Webmaster Tools shows the site is healthy:
• Sitemaps submitted successfully (no errors)
• Site Explorer shows the number of Indexed URLs increasing over time (now ~60+)
• URL Inspection → Live URL test shows “URL can be indexed by Bing”
• Robots.txt Tester shows Allowed for Bingbot

But Bing Search shows nothing

• site:example.com returns 0 results
• url:https://example.com/ returns 0 results
• Searching the brand name or page titles does not return the site either

Technical checks performed

robots.txt is reachable and clean:

• returns 200 OK
• Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
• contains standard rules:
• User-agent: *
• Disallow: /wp-admin/
• Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
• Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml

sitemap_index.xml returns 200 OK (Content-Type: text/xml). Individual sitemap files also return 200.

• (Sitemaps return X-Robots-Tag: noindex which I understand is normal for sitemap files)

Pages are indexable:

• <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
• canonical is set correctly (self-referential to the https URL)

Bingbot simulation from a local machine returns 200 OK consistently:

• curl -I -A "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)" https://example.com/
• also tested https://example.com/robots.txt and https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml with the same UA

Question

Given the above, what would cause Bing Webmaster Tools to show URLs as “Indexed” / “Indexable”, but Bing Search to return zero results for site: and url: queries? Is there a known delay between “Indexed” in Webmaster Tools and serving results in Bing Search, or could this indicate suppression / quality filtering / another issue that requires support intervention?

If helpful, I can provide screenshots from:

URL Inspection (Live URL can be indexed)

Site Explorer (Indexed URLs count increasing)

• Bing Search results showing 0 for site: / url:
• If a Microsoft moderator needs the exact domain and sample URLs for investigation, please let me know the preferred private channel and I will share them.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Johnc,
Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum. I'm happy to help.

When a page appears as "Indexed", it should be displayed on Bing search result.

I really wish I could assist you directly on this issue. However, the behavior you're experiencing is tied to back‑end systems and service functionality, and unfortunately, we don't have the authority or access required to investigate or make changes at that level.

Please note that this is a user-to-user support forum. Moderators, contributors including external Microsoft employees cannot directly intervene in Microsoft product features or access back-end systems. Our role is limited to providing technical guidance on reported issues, requests, or ideas.

Given these limitations, the most appropriate avenue is to contact:

• Webmaster Support - Bing Webmaster Tools
• Microsoft Support

Thank you for your understanding, and I hope the support team can resolve this for you soon.