How I Got Out of Bing Jail (And Why I Even Bothered)

If you’re running a website and suddenly vanish from a search engine — even a smaller one like Bing — it can feel frustrating, confusing, and honestly a bit personal. Especially when you check your tools, everything looks fine, and yet… you’re nowhere to be found.
That’s exactly what happened to me.

The Disappearance

On November 5 2024, my site was still showing as indexed in Bing Webmaster Tools. No crawl errors. Everything looked okay — on paper. But in reality? It was completely gone from Bing search results.
At first, I thought it was just a glitch. But days turned into weeks, and the site remained invisible. By late January, even the number of indexed pages started dropping. Between January 31 and February 5, there were these short moments where Bing would randomly reindex parts of the site, show me in search for a few hours, and then pull everything again. It was like being stuck in a ghost loop.

Bing Support: Copy-Paste Central

I reached out to Bing support multiple times. Here’s a taste of what I got back — every time:

“Your website did not meet the standards set by Bing… We are unable to provide specifics… Please review our Webmaster Guidelines… We will not be able to add your site to the index while it’s in violation…”

No matter how much I asked — even begged — for a direction to look in, I got the same generic response. No specifics. Just links to vague blog posts like “10 SEO Myths” and “The Role of Content Quality.”
I get it. They’re being cautious. But that doesn’t help the average webmaster trying to fix something invisible.

The Graph That Tells the Story

Even though Bing wasn’t a major traffic driver, I still tracked performance. And this graph tells the whole story:

Clicks were never high, but that wasn’t the point. I wanted to be visible, not penalized.

So What Did I Actually Fix?

At this point, I stopped waiting on support and just started fixing everything I could think of.

✅ Fixed Schema Conflicts
I had two sets of schema active — from Blocksy and RankMath. I disabled the Blocksy version to avoid duplicate markup.

✅ Removed Bad Backlinks
I reviewed my backlink profile and disavowed low-quality links that might’ve been dragging things down.

✅ Rewrote All AI Content ✍️
Early on, I used AI tools to generate content for certain pages. But it wasn’t great — generic, thin, and not helpful. So I rewrote everything. Clear explanations, unique angles, and original tone — like something I’d send to a real person.

✅ Menu Scroll CSS (This Was HUGE)
My navigation menu used CSS scrolling on dropdowns. It looked fine visually, but apparently Bing isn’t great at rendering CSS. There’s a chance they thought I was hiding important links. I removed the scroll, made everything open cleanly, and ensured all nav items were fully visible.

✅ Hidden Text Warnings
Some important disclaimers like “18+ only” or “Terms Apply” were embedded via CSS — visible to users, but invisible to bots. I moved those into plain HTML so that Bingbot could properly see them.

The Return: Slow but Real

In March, I started to notice things improving. Pages were staying indexed. Then I got a few impressions. Then clicks. And finally — full reappearance in search.
Was it perfect? No. But I was no longer in Bing jail, and that alone felt like a victory.

Final Thoughts

Don’t rely on Bing support to tell you what’s wrong — they won’t.
Bing is less advanced than Google when it comes to CSS, JavaScript, and structure interpretation.
AI content is risky if left untouched. Rewrite it. Make it human. Make it yours.
Even small traffic sources matter. If your site is penalized anywhere, it’s a signal that something is off.

Getting out of Bing jail taught me a lot — about SEO, user experience, and patience.
If you’re stuck in the same situation, just know: you can get out. It takes work, but it’s possible.