Can you noindex posts on Google while keep indexed on Bing?

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lynnsweet

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Hey all, looking for an answer on something with Google vs Bing.

We have a website with posts on a lot of broad topics, the niche audience might search for, but are not directly related to products/services. A lot of informational articles are not ranking well now or are already answered in AIO, and I think overly broad topics don't help establish topic authority.

Not sure how the algorithm works on Bing. Some broad articles seem dead on Google, but are doing well on Bing, like ranking in the top 10, top 5. Bing traffic is not that much, but I don't want to throw it away completely.

So I was wondering if we can noindex the dead posts on Google only, but still keep them indexed and ranked on Bing?
Does anyone do it like that? Can you set different index directives for different search engines?

Happy to hear any useful thoughts. Thank you!
 
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Interesting case you might want to avoid no-indexing them if they are still driving some traffic from Bing has anybody tried indexing them in both engines but making their content better or more specific?
 
As far as I know, noindex is not search engine wise. If you add it, Bing will also stop indexing that page.
 
You can just use the Googlebot-specific meta tag for this purpose:
Code: 
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">
This leaves Bingbot unaffected.
 
I’d be careful with this approach because the same noindex directive is generally seen by both Google and Bing. If you need different behavior, I’d look into search-engine-specific controls or a separate technical setup rather than relying on one robots meta tag.
 
lynnsweet said:
Hey all, looking for an answer on something with Google vs Bing.

We have a website with posts on a lot of broad topics, the niche audience might search for, but are not directly related to products/services. A lot of informational articles are not ranking well now or are already answered in AIO, and I think overly broad topics don't help establish topic authority.

Not sure how the algorithm works on Bing. Some broad articles seem dead on Google, but are doing well on Bing, like ranking in the top 10, top 5. Bing traffic is not that much, but I don't want to throw it away completely.

So I was wondering if we can noindex the dead posts on Google only, but still keep them indexed and ranked on Bing?
Does anyone do it like that? Can you set different index directives for different search engines?

Happy to hear any useful thoughts. Thank you!
Click to expand...
afaik should use noindex meta tag specifically for googlebot as noindex is used by both. do verify from gsc and bing tool after change are made.
 
chaosvn said:
Interesting case you might want to avoid no-indexing them if they are still driving some traffic from Bing has anybody tried indexing them in both engines but making their content better or more specific?
Click to expand...
Yes, I would not use noindexing too soon if there is still some traffic from Bing. I would make the content better and observe both the search engines.
 
lynnsweet said:
Hey all, looking for an answer on something with Google vs Bing.

We have a website with posts on a lot of broad topics, the niche audience might search for, but are not directly related to products/services. A lot of informational articles are not ranking well now or are already answered in AIO, and I think overly broad topics don't help establish topic authority.

Not sure how the algorithm works on Bing. Some broad articles seem dead on Google, but are doing well on Bing, like ranking in the top 10, top 5. Bing traffic is not that much, but I don't want to throw it away completely.

So I was wondering if we can noindex the dead posts on Google only, but still keep them indexed and ranked on Bing?
Does anyone do it like that? Can you set different index directives for different search engines?

Happy to hear any useful thoughts. Thank you!
Click to expand...
Yes you can technically do that with bot specific directives. So you can noindex a page for Googlebot but allow it to be indexed for Bingbot.
 
lynnsweet said:
Hey all, looking for an answer on something with Google vs Bing.

We have a website with posts on a lot of broad topics, the niche audience might search for, but are not directly related to products/services. A lot of informational articles are not ranking well now or are already answered in AIO, and I think overly broad topics don't help establish topic authority.

Not sure how the algorithm works on Bing. Some broad articles seem dead on Google, but are doing well on Bing, like ranking in the top 10, top 5. Bing traffic is not that much, but I don't want to throw it away completely.

So I was wondering if we can noindex the dead posts on Google only, but still keep them indexed and ranked on Bing?
Does anyone do it like that? Can you set different index directives for different search engines?

Happy to hear any useful thoughts. Thank you!
Click to expand...
AFAIK noindex for googlebot should do the trick for that google will de-index the page while bing would not, I would just double check webmaster tools after
 
the googlebot meta tag above does it. i did this on about 40 broad posts, bing kept them, google dropped them in a few weeks. the bing traffic on those was small but real. just make sure nothing important links from those pages or you lose the internal flow
 
To the best of my knowledge there should be nothing search engine specific about a basic noindex statement so both google and bing should be able to see it since your goal is to leave the pages indexable by bing you might consider trying other techniques to boost Google signals have you tried anything else?
 
lynnsweet said:
Hey all, looking for an answer on something with Google vs Bing.

We have a website with posts on a lot of broad topics, the niche audience might search for, but are not directly related to products/services. A lot of informational articles are not ranking well now or are already answered in AIO, and I think overly broad topics don't help establish topic authority.

Not sure how the algorithm works on Bing. Some broad articles seem dead on Google, but are doing well on Bing, like ranking in the top 10, top 5. Bing traffic is not that much, but I don't want to throw it away completely.

So I was wondering if we can noindex the dead posts on Google only, but still keep them indexed and ranked on Bing?
Does anyone do it like that? Can you set different index directives for different search engines?

Happy to hear any useful thoughts. Thank you!
Click to expand...
I do not think that you can use a normal noindex directive to target Google while keeping the same page indexed by Bing. The directive is generally seen by the search engines that crawl the page. If Bing traffic is still valuable for you, I would think about keeping your pages indexable and try to see what else can be improved on the Google side.
 
if thos post are still bringing bing traffic not remove them from the index just because google not sending much traffic maybe update the weaker articles and make them more focused on the actual search intent that way you keep bing visibility while giving google another chance to pick them up
 
Thank you for all your opinions!

I will be careful about those posts before making big changes. I might still do a non-indexed tests on parts of the no-traffic, no-ranking posts, and try to improve other content and see if Google will re-evaluate them again.
 
You can add noindex tag for Google bot in robots.txt file but it's just a guideline for bots. It won't prevent them from indexing the pages. If you want to block them completely, you should cloak the page to display content only for Bing bot.
 
lynnsweet said:
Hey all, looking for an answer on something with Google vs Bing.

We have a website with posts on a lot of broad topics, the niche audience might search for, but are not directly related to products/services. A lot of informational articles are not ranking well now or are already answered in AIO, and I think overly broad topics don't help establish topic authority.

Not sure how the algorithm works on Bing. Some broad articles seem dead on Google, but are doing well on Bing, like ranking in the top 10, top 5. Bing traffic is not that much, but I don't want to throw it away completely.

So I was wondering if we can noindex the dead posts on Google only, but still keep them indexed and ranked on Bing?
Does anyone do it like that? Can you set different index directives for different search engines?

Happy to hear any useful thoughts. Thank you!
Click to expand...
In the situation where the page is generating Bing traffic through search and it is not indexed by google, then I would not apply noindex on that particular page. start with a small test group on the googlebot noindex.
 
Hi, Yes. you can absolutely noindex pages for Googlebot specifically while keeping them indexed for Bingbot. Search engines respect user agent specific indexing directives.
 
nah, noindex applies to all search engines, you cant tell Google to ignore it while Bing keeps it indexed afaik.
 
lynnsweet said:
Hey all, looking for an answer on something with Google vs Bing.

We have a website with posts on a lot of broad topics, the niche audience might search for, but are not directly related to products/services. A lot of informational articles are not ranking well now or are already answered in AIO, and I think overly broad topics don't help establish topic authority.

Not sure how the algorithm works on Bing. Some broad articles seem dead on Google, but are doing well on Bing, like ranking in the top 10, top 5. Bing traffic is not that much, but I don't want to throw it away completely.

So I was wondering if we can noindex the dead posts on Google only, but still keep them indexed and ranked on Bing?
Does anyone do it like that? Can you set different index directives for different search engines?

Happy to hear any useful thoughts. Thank you!
Click to expand...
Well, I think that googlebot noindex is indeed the right path to follow. Instead of following this procedure for all page on the website, however, it might be sensible to begin by testing out a few of them first. In the event that the selected page continue to get traffic from bing, then there will be no point to deleting them.
 
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