TOPIC:

Hello wonderful FreeToastHost2 Support folks,

I'm trying to get Bing to find / recognize / crawl / our website so it will show it when people use Bing to find Toastmasters clubs here. I used the "add meta tag" approach. Bing seems to be having trouble getting the server's attention as you see below. No doubt I'm doing something wrong.

Thanks for your help.

John. Club 3963.

Bing could not verify ownership of this site. See below for more details:

XML
URL hinoontoastmastersclubsorg.toastmastersc...org/BingSiteAuth.xml
Web Exception Status: ConnectFailure

Meta Tag
URL hinoontoastmastersclubsorg.toastmastersclubs.org/
Timeout: the request timed out before we could get a response from your server. If this persists, it could indicate your server is not allowing connections from Bing. Check your server configuration unintentional IP level blocks or contact your hosting provider.

DNS
URL b76c475f52541cbf1b74a9c6f840b749.hinoontoastmastersclubsorg.toastmastersclubs.org
Canonical Name Records No data available
We did not detect verify.bing.com in the CNAME records for the host.

since the only link to your sit is 3963.toastmastersclubs.org/ on toastmasters.org find a club try looking for that url

Okay, tried that and clicked Verify five times. Same message each time:

Bing could not verify ownership of this site. See below for more details:

XML
URL 3963.toastmastersclubs.org/BingSiteAuth.xml
Web Exception Status: ConnectFailure

Meta Tag
URL 3963.toastmastersclubs.org/
Timeout: the request timed out before we could get a response from your server. If this persists, it could indicate your server is not allowing connections from Bing. Check your server configuration unintentional IP level blocks or contact your hosting provider.

DNS
URL 72e3e684d4b10d0c8f70a4030a7787ba.3963.toastmastersclubs.org
Canonical Name Records No data available
We did not detect verify.bing.com in the CNAME records for the host.

You may have managed to mismatch the meta tag that you entered in the admin console. I recommend you just have the Bing web tools create a new meta tag for you.

The meta tag that is in the admin console must match what Bing thinks it should be for it to believe you own the site.

Bing gave me the same meta tag:

<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="CD599834B0ADB9E3254D9EC22D6B1161" />

This is how that meta tag reads in the header of the website, after loading it in with the FreeToastHost2 edit facility:

<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="CD599834B0ADB9E3254D9EC22D6B1161" />

I don't see a difference between them.

Bing gives me the same error message.

Maybe I'm not understanding your suggested fix.

Also, searching Bing for 3963.toastmastersclubs.org/ does not yield our web page. It does find our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Basically, our website seems to be invisible to Bing.

Google works fine for our website.

Regarding Bing being unable to verify the site ownership, I used to face the same problem and had given up... Until one fine day I checked and Bing had the ownership verified. I'd say try the Meta Tag method and wait it out for a few days.

The second problem appears to be more common than I thought... Not just our club, but three of our fellow clubs (out of total 3 that I checked):
Bangalore Toastmasters Club (btmc.toastmastersclubs.org/),
Infosys Toastmasters Bangalore Club (9688.toastmastersclubs.org/) and
Electronic City Toastmasters Club (electronicscity.toastmastersclubs.org)
use Free ToastHost websites... and none of them can be found on Bing, even if you paste the complete URL there.

Thanks for commenting Arindam.roy.

Two additional thoughts:

Somewhere I read that Yahoo uses Bing, but Yahoo 'finds' us while Bing doesn't.

Also, somewhere, I read that Bing sometimes puts a website on their 'bad' list and refuses to show them. That may have happened in our cases. They have a complaint procedure which might help us. Haven't investigated that yet.

Let's keep noodling the problem.

John

Digistar2 wrote:

Somewhere I read that Yahoo uses Bing, but Yahoo 'finds' us while Bing doesn't.

Click on the link entitled "Submit your Site for Free" on the following page:
search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Watch where you land when you click that Submit your Site for Free link. (Bing Webmaster Tools)

That link led to the Bing Webmaster Tools sign in page, which led to the Verify Your Site page - where I had been before. This time though, the verify process worked right away.

Now I can see the Dashboard. That shows the site has not been indexed.

So, some progress. Thanks Steve.

I sent them a message yesterday at: www.bing.com/webmaster/support. Told them the site is not being indexed. It said I will hear back within 24 hours.

You may have managed to mismatch the meta tag that you entered in the admin console. I recommend you just have the Bing web tools create a new meta tag for you.

I have tried that. No luck.

Under site activity on the dashboard Bing shows 32 "crawl errors", no pages crawled and no pages indexed.

I received one email response from a Bing engineer, to my initial help request. He just said to be patient and the site would be found and indexed in a few days. That was a month or two ago. I sent a reply to his email and have not heard anything since then.