How Can an SEO Professional Check Whether Bingbot Is Able to Crawl Important Pages on a Website?

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An SEO professional should regularly check whether Bingbot can access important webpages. This helps identify technical problems that may prevent Bing from discovering or processing website content.

The easiest starting point is Bing Webmaster Tools, Microsoft’s platform for monitoring website performance and diagnosing SEO issues. Its URL Inspection and Robots.txt Tester tools help you check individual pages and identify crawling restrictions.

1. Use URL Inspection in Bing Webmaster Tools

The URL Inspection tool is one of the most useful options for checking important pages. It provides information about crawling, indexing, SEO issues, and the page’s HTTP response.

Follow these steps:

  1. Open Bing Webmaster Tools.
  2. Add and verify your website if you haven’t already.
  3. Open the URL Inspection tool.
  4. Enter the URL of an important webpage.
  5. Review its indexing status and any reported crawling errors.
  6. Open the Live URL tab to test the page’s current accessibility to Bingbot.

The Live URL feature helps you see how Bingbot accesses the page. If Bing cannot crawl it because of a restriction or another issue, the tool can report details.

Example: Suppose your website has an important service page at https://example.com/seo-services/. Inspect this URL to check for crawling problems before investigating its search visibility.

Remember that a successful live crawl does not automatically mean the page is indexed or will rank.

2. Test the Website’s Robots.txt File

A robots.txt file can accidentally prevent Bingbot from crawling important pages. Even a small mistake in its rules may affect multiple URLs.

Use the official Bing Robots.txt Tester to investigate.

Here is how to use it:

  1. Open the Robots.txt Tester in Bing Webmaster Tools.
  2. Select your website’s property.
  3. Enter the important URL you want to test.
  4. Select Bingbot as the user agent.
  5. Run the test and check whether a rule blocks the URL.
  6. If blocked, review the relevant Disallow and Allow directives.

For example, consider this robots.txt rule:

User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /services/

This rule blocks Bingbot from crawling URLs under /services/. If your key service pages use this URL structure, you may need to correct the rule.

The tester identifies which directive affects a URL. Remember to test the published robots.txt file, not just an edited draft.

3. Check Site Explorer for Crawling Issues

Bing Webmaster Tools also provides Site Explorer, which helps you examine your website’s URLs and identify technical problems.

You can use it to find:

  • URLs blocked by robots.txt.
  • Pages returning errors, such as 404 or server errors.
  • Pages containing a noindex directive.
  • Redirecting URLs.
  • URLs that Bing has discovered but not yet crawled.

This is especially useful when checking many important pages rather than inspecting every URL individually.

4. Review Server Logs for Bingbot Visits

Server logs record requests made to your website, including requests from search-engine crawlers.

An SEO professional can review these logs to understand whether Bingbot has requested important URLs and whether the server returned successful responses.

For example:

Log findingWhat it might indicate
Bingbot requests a page and receives 200 OKThe server successfully served the request
Bingbot receives 403 ForbiddenAccess may be restricted
Bingbot receives 404 Not FoundThe requested URL may not exist
Bingbot receives 500 Internal Server ErrorA server-side problem may prevent crawling

A 200 OK response is a positive sign, but it doesn’t prove Bingbot successfully processed every part of the page.

Also, verify that requests genuinely came from Bingbot. User-agent strings can be spoofed, so use Microsoft’s recommended verification methods before trusting log entries.

5. Check Internal Links and XML Sitemaps

Bingbot needs ways to discover important pages. Internal links and XML sitemaps can help it find those URLs.

An SEO professional should check that:

  • Important pages have relevant internal links.
  • Pages aren’t accidentally orphaned from the website’s navigation.
  • The XML sitemap includes the correct, canonical URLs.
  • Important URLs aren’t blocked by robots.txt.
  • Internal links don’t unnecessarily lead through redirects or broken pages.

You can review sitemap processing information through Bing Webmaster Tools. Submitting a sitemap helps Bing discover URLs, but it does not guarantee crawling, indexing, or rankings.

Conclusion

An SEO professional can check Bingbot’s access using URL Inspection, the Robots.txt Tester, Site Explorer, and server logs.

Each method provides a different piece of information. Together, they help identify blocked URLs, server errors, and other crawling problems.

The key lesson: Confirm that Bingbot can crawl the page before investigating why it isn’t indexed or ranking. Crawling is an important step, but successful crawling alone does not guarantee search visibility.

For further reading, start with Microsoft’s URL Inspection guide.