How to Fix Bing Sitemap & Crawl Errors

Sitemap and crawl errors are the most common blockers between a Malaysian business site and its Bing rankings. Clearing them is core Technical SEO for Bing work: they’re diagnosable in Bing Webmaster Tools, and most fixes take minutes rather than days. Here’s the order to work through them.

Step 1: validate your sitemap

Every fix starts here. Open your sitemap URL directly in a browser (usually /sitemap.xml or /sitemap-index.xml) and check that:

• The file loads without a 404 or 5xx
• The XML is well-formed (browsers highlight parse errors)
• URL entries use fully-qualified absolute URLs (not relative paths)
• Every listed URL actually returns 200 OK
• Dates and priorities (if used) are sensible

Use the free Bing Webmaster Tools sitemap validator to check for engine-specific issues.

Step 2: submit or resubmit

In Bing Webmaster Tools, go to Sitemaps and submit the sitemap URL. If it’s already submitted but showing errors, resubmit after your fixes so Bing knows to re-crawl.

For large sites, use a sitemap index that references multiple category sitemaps rather than one giant file. Bing handles indices well and it makes error diagnosis easier.

Step 3: audit crawl errors in Bing Webmaster Tools

The Crawl Errors report shows every URL where Bing hit a problem. Sort by frequency and tackle the biggest categories first:

• 404 Not Found. Either restore the page, redirect it (301) to the closest equivalent, or remove it from your sitemap.
• 5xx Server Errors. Usually intermittent hosting issues or overloaded database queries. If persistent, escalate to your host.
• Redirect chains. Bing follows redirects but penalises chains longer than 2-3 hops. Update internal links to point directly to the final URL.
• Timeouts. Slow pages. Check server response time and reduce it under 500ms where possible.

Step 4: check robots.txt and directives

Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for:

• Accidental Disallow: / rules
• User-agent-specific blocks for bingbot
• Blocks on important paths (/blog/, /services/)

Every rule should be intentional. Staging-environment robots.txt files sometimes get promoted to production accidentally.

Also check individual page meta robots tags for stray noindex values, especially after CMS migrations or SEO plugin updates.

Step 5: crawl budget for large sites

For sites with 5,000+ pages, crawl budget matters. Bing allocates a certain amount of crawl activity to your site per day; if you have hundreds of low-value or duplicate URLs, they eat the budget that should go to your priority pages.

Common crawl-budget fixes:

• Set noindex on faceted-search or filter URLs that shouldn’t rank
• Consolidate duplicate content with proper canonicals
• Remove obvious junk URLs from the sitemap
• Use IndexNow to push priority pages directly instead of waiting for crawl

Step 6: verify with the Site Explorer

After changes, open Site Explorer in Bing Webmaster Tools and confirm the fixed URLs now appear correctly indexed. Bing usually reflects changes within 24-72 hours after resubmission.

When to escalate

If you’ve done all six steps and pages still aren’t indexed, or you’re dealing with hundreds of errors across a large catalogue, an audit is the fastest way through — book a free audit and we’ll include a full crawl-error diagnosis.