How Can I Check Whether Bing Is Indexing All My Website Pages

Question

Hello,

I manage the following restaurant menu information website:

[link removed]

I am trying to understand whether Bing is properly discovering, crawling, and indexing all the important pages of the website.

What is the best way to check which URLs are currently indexed by Bing? Is Bing Webmaster Tools Site Explorer enough for this, or should I also submit individual URLs and use IndexNow whenever menu information is updated?

I would also appreciate guidance on how to identify technical issues that may prevent some pages from appearing in Bing search results, such as sitemap problems, robots.txt settings, duplicate content, canonical tags, or crawl errors.

Thank you for your guidance.

Answer 1

Hi Narine,

I understand the pressure of managing a business website, especially when it is not always clear why some pages appear in search results while others do not. The AI answer already covered the main Bing Webmaster Tools areas, so I would start with those recommendations first. Besides those, I do have some other quick checks you can perform:

1 - Determine whether the issue is indexing or ranking

• Search Bing using: site:yourdomain.com
• If the pages appear, then the issue may not be discovery or indexing.
• Make sure it provides enough unique information compared to menu pages appeared in search.

2 - Watch for patterns rather than individual URLs

• Instead of checking pages one by one, look for trends:
  • Are restaurant pages indexed but menu pages are not?
  • Are newer pages missing while older pages are indexed?
  • Are pages from a specific category missing?
• Find and open a menu page that appears in search results.
• Compare it with a similar menu page that does not appear, for differences:
  • Amount of content on the page.
  • Number of internal links pointing to the page.
  • Whether one page contains more complete restaurant or menu information.
• Sometimes the issue is isolated to a specific section of the site rather than the entire website.

3 - Make sure important menu pages are easy to discover

• Open your website homepage > navigate to the menu page that you want indexed
• Count how many clicks it takes to get to the page
• Check whether the page is linked from category pages, restaurant pages, or navigation menus.
• If it's only accessible through search box or filters, it can be more difficult for search engines to discover consistently.

For a restaurant menu website specifically, I would focus first on internal linking, dynamic content loading, and "unindexed" patterns, as those are common causes that may not be immediately obvious from the standard Webmaster Tools reports.

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Answer 2

The most direct way to check which pages are indexed is Bing Webmaster Tools > Sitemaps > select the sitemap > Sitemap Index Coverage. This report shows which URLs from the submitted sitemap are indexed, which are excluded, and the exclusion reasons. It also supports Export, which is useful for reviewing affected URLs in bulk.

Site Explorer alone is not the best source for index status of all pages. For bulk index visibility, the Sitemap Index Coverage report is the fastest way to see indexed versus non-indexed URLs.

A practical workflow is:

1. Submit a complete sitemap.xml in Bing Webmaster Tools.
   This gives Bing a full list of important URLs.
2. Open the sitemap’s Index Coverage report.
   Review indexed URLs and excluded URLs.
3. Check exclusion reasons. Common reasons listed in the available guidance include:
   • Not yet crawled
   • Content quality
   • Redirected
   • Blocked by robots.txt
4. Export the excluded URL list.
   Use that list to investigate patterns across sections of the site.
5. Use URL Inspection for specific pages when a page is important or recently changed.
   In Bing Webmaster Tools, select URL Inspection, enter the URL, and select Inspect.

For updated menu pages, submitting individual URLs can help. Bing also supports programmatic submission through the Bing Webmaster API, which allows submission of URLs and sitemaps. If the site changes frequently, IndexNow is designed to notify search engines about important content updates. The guidance specifically recommends using it for major updates and automation when a site has multiple URLs and frequent updates.

Use this approach for updates:

• Routine coverage: keep the sitemap complete and current.
• Important page checks: use URL Inspection for specific URLs.
• Frequent or significant updates: use IndexNow or automate submissions.
• Bulk operational workflows: use the Bing Webmaster API for URL and sitemap submission.

For technical issues that can prevent pages from appearing in search results, the supported checks are:

1. Sitemap coverage
   If URLs are missing from the sitemap, they will not appear in the sitemap coverage report.
2. robots.txt blocking
   Review exclusions marked Blocked by robots.txt.
3. Crawl activity and crawl issues
   In Bing Webmaster Tools, check crawl-related sections such as crawl activity and errors. Low crawl activity or many errors can affect discovery and indexing.
4. Indexing versus ranking
   A page can be indexed but still not appear prominently in search results. The available guidance distinguishes these as separate processes.
5. Content quality review
   If pages are not appearing despite technical setup looking correct, quality-related review can be a factor.

The available material does not provide Bing-specific step-by-step checks for canonical tags or duplicate content diagnostics inside Webmaster Tools. Based on the supported guidance, the strongest self-service path is to use:

• Sitemaps / Sitemap Index Coverage for bulk indexed vs. excluded status
• URL Inspection for page-level checks
• Crawl-related reports for discovery and crawl problems
• IndexNow or API submissions for frequent important updates

If pages remain in a state such as discovered but not crawled or indexing still does not progress after sitemap submission, robots.txt review, and URL submission, use the Bing Webmaster Tools support/help resources.

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