Bing can’t read sitemap error 403(forbidden)

[K-BeautyUK]

Hi,

does anyone know why bingbot is being refused access to my sitemap, I’ve had no problem with google accessing the sitemap?

Thanks

martina 

[rmanke]

I am having the exact same problem.  Maybe this is why nobody is using Bing?

[K-BeautyUK]

Maybe it’s something google’s doing, as part of their master plan. 😂

[jackyle]

There is not yourself, but many people who are bingbot are denied access to the site map, while google is normal. I don't understand what is happening to Bing now?

[K-BeautyUK]

Hi all,

I found a workaround that worked for me. If you submit your site http://k-Beauty.co.uk/sitemap with http instead of https it reads the submitted sitemap, but not the linked ones. So I submitted them all separately: http://k-beauty.co.uk/sitemap_blogs_1.xml, http://k-beauty.co.uk/sitemap_pages_1.xml,                                           http://k-beauty.co.uk/sitemap_collections_1.xml and http://k-Beauty.co.uk/sitemap_products_1.xml.

It’s not ideal, but it worked for me.

[rmanke]

This is a good suggestion, but the linked sitemaps are numerically generated and will potentially change everytime you add or removing products, pages or blogs from your site.

I guess once the site is in Bing it doesn't need the sitemaps anyways, because it should be crawling all the linked pages.

I would be worried about Bing relying on the sitemaps if they're out of date, which they will be once any of those above items changes.

[K-BeautyUK]

That’s a very good point.

Bing customer service has finally gotten back to me, they are going to submit the sitemap and investigate. I will update if and when they get to me.

[rmanke]

Thanks. I'm sure it's a problem for many people if they care about Bing results.

[MarkP1]

Did you ever get an answer from Bing about how to resolve this issue?

[K-BeautyUK]

Hi,
No sorry I never got an answer, but since I submitted all the sitemaps separately as http: not https: bing has been successfully discovering and crawling the site.

[BecD]

The http:// fix worked for me too. Now back to tearing my hair out over Google not accepting it. My shop is pointless if google won't index it.