Why Bing Webmaster Tools and site: Show Different Page Counts

Anyone looking for a Bing indexed pages checker usually starts with one number and then finds a second one that does not match. A site: search shows one figure, Site Explorer in Bing Webmaster Tools shows another, and the sitemap report a third. None of them is wrong; they measure different things. Here is what each number means and how to get an exact answer for the pages that matter.

Three numbers, three different questions

site: results. Bing describes site: as returning "webpages that belong to the specified site." It is a search, not a report: Bing does not present the result count as an index total, and the count shifts with the query. It answers "does Bing hold pages from this domain?", not "how many".

Site Explorer. In Bing Webmaster Tools, Site Explorer shows the site as a folder tree and counts URLs per folder as Indexed, Error, Warning and Excluded. It reflects most URLs Bing has seen for the site, including redirects, broken links and pages blocked by robots.txt, so its totals include addresses you never meant to be indexed.

Sitemap Index Coverage. This report compares the URLs in your submitted sitemaps with the index and lists the not-indexed ones with reasons. It only covers what the sitemap contains, and Bing limits the breakdown to sites with more than 10,000 URLs indexed.

Why the numbers drift apart

Getting an exact answer

Counts tell you whether there is a problem; a per-URL list tells you where it is.

  1. Define the target list. Export the URLs that should be indexed, usually from the sitemap. Leave out redirects, error pages and noindex pages.
  2. Check each URL. Bing's url: operator "checks whether the listed domain or web address is in the Bing index," which works for a handful of pages. For hundreds or thousands, a bulk check such as SpeedyIndex returns a status for every address in one report.
  3. Compare with Site Explorer. Folders with many missing URLs in your list should also show errors, warnings or exclusions there.
  4. Inspect samples. Open a few missing URLs in URL Inspection and read the crawl permission, fetch result and selected canonical.
  5. Fix and resubmit. Correct the cause, keep the sitemap's lastmod accurate and notify Bing through IndexNow. A 200 response confirms receipt, not indexing.

For single pages, the ways to check one page in Bing cover the operators and reports in more detail.

What a healthy picture looks like

FAQ

Which Bing count is the most accurate?

None of them is a full per-URL answer. Site Explorer and the sitemap report are the closest to Bing's own data for your site; a URL-by-URL check is the only way to know the status of every specific page.

Why does site: show more pages than my sitemap?

site: can return pages that are not in the sitemap at all, such as old URLs, parameter variants or pages on another subdomain of the same site.

Can Bing Webmaster Tools check pages on other people's sites?

No. Its reports cover sites you have verified. For other domains, use url: or a bulk check.

How often is it worth rechecking the list?

After every release that adds, moves or removes many URLs, after a migration, and on a regular schedule for the pages that bring revenue. Comparing two checks of the same list shows which pages dropped out and which were picked up.

Related: No referring sitemaps detected: what Discovery is telling you

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