Shopify Store Not Showing Up on Bing? 7 Fixes That Actually Work

You search for your own store on Bing and… nothing. Not on page one, not on page five — sometimes not even for your exact brand name. Meanwhile Google indexed you weeks ago.

This is one of the most common complaints in Shopify and Microsoft forums, and the answers scattered across those threads are usually incomplete. Here’s the full picture: seven fixes that actually get Shopify stores into Bing’s index, in the order to try them.

Why bother with Bing at all? Because Bing’s index also powers DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Ecosia, ChatGPT search and Microsoft Copilot. Invisible on Bing means invisible across all of them — including the AI assistants a growing share of shoppers use to find products.

One thing to keep straight before we start: indexing is not ranking. These fixes get your pages into Bing’s index, which is the mandatory first step. Where you rank afterwards depends on your content, links, and competition — no tool or app can promise that.

First, confirm the problem

Run this search on Bing:

site:yourstore.com

Replace yourstore.com with your actual domain. This shows every page of your store that Bing has indexed.

Zero results → Bing hasn’t indexed your store at all. Start with Fix 1 and work down.
A handful of results, but missing your important pages → you’re partially indexed. Fixes 4–7 are for you.
Plenty of results but you don’t rank for anything → you’re indexed; that’s a ranking problem, not an indexing one, and a different topic. Our Bing SEO for Shopify guide covers that side.

Fix 1: Verify your store in Bing Webmaster Tools

If you haven’t verified your store in Bing Webmaster Tools, do this first. Everything else in this guide depends on it — sitemap submission, URL inspection, index reporting.

The fast way (if you already use Google Search Console): Bing Webmaster Tools can import your verified sites straight from Google Search Console — no DNS records, no meta tags.

Go to Bing Webmaster Tools and sign in with a Microsoft account.
Choose Import from Google Search Console.
Authorize with the Google account that owns your Search Console property.
Select your store and import. Sitemaps you’d submitted to Google typically come along too.

The manual way: Add your site by URL, then verify. On Shopify, the easiest method is usually the DNS (CNAME) option through your domain registrar, or the meta tag method by pasting Bing’s tag into your theme’s theme.liquid file inside the <head> (Shopify admin → Online Store → Themes → Edit code).

For a detailed walkthrough of each verification method, see our Bing Webmaster Tools for Shopify guide.

Fix 2: Submit your sitemap

Shopify automatically generates a sitemap for every store — you don’t have to create anything. It lives at:

https://yourstore.com/sitemap.xml

It’s an index sitemap that links out to separate sitemaps for your products, collections, pages, and blog posts, and Shopify keeps it updated as your catalog changes.

To submit it:

Bing Webmaster Tools → Sitemaps → Submit sitemap
Enter the full URL: https://yourstore.com/sitemap.xml
Click Submit.

The status should show as “Success” once Bing processes it, along with a count of discovered URLs. If it errors, open the sitemap URL in your browser first — if you can’t load it, neither can Bing (usually a sign of Fix 6’s problem: password protection).

Full details in our sitemap submission guide.

Fix 3: Check that robots.txt isn’t blocking bingbot

Shopify’s default robots.txt (at yourstore.com/robots.txt) is search-engine friendly and does not block Bing. But Shopify lets merchants edit it via a robots.txt.liquid template, and a surprising number of indexing problems trace back to a well-meaning edit — often one made to block aggressive scrapers that accidentally caught bingbot too.

Open https://yourstore.com/robots.txt and look for anything like:

User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /

or a blanket User-agent: * followed by Disallow: /. Either one tells Bing’s crawler to stay out entirely.

If you find a block, remove it: Shopify admin → Online Store → Themes → Edit code → robots.txt.liquid under Templates. If that file doesn’t exist, you’re on Shopify’s defaults and this isn’t your problem. Also check any firewall or bot-protection apps, which can block crawlers invisibly to robots.txt — make sure bingbot is allowlisted.

Fix 4: Use URL Inspection and Request Indexing

For individual pages that matter most — your homepage, best-selling products, key collections — you can ask Bing directly:

In Bing Webmaster Tools, open URL Inspection in the left sidebar.
Paste the full URL of the page and inspect it.
Review the result. It tells you whether the URL is indexed, and if not, why — crawl errors, noindex tags, redirect issues.
If the page is eligible but not indexed, click Request Indexing.

There’s also a standalone Submit URLs feature (under Configure My Site → Submit URLs in some accounts, or via the IndexNow section) for pushing URLs without inspecting them first.

This works well for a handful of pages. It does not scale to a catalog of hundreds of products — that’s what Fix 7 is for.

Fix 5: Understand “Discovered but not crawled”

If URL Inspection shows your pages as “Discovered but not crawled”, Bing knows those URLs exist — from your sitemap or links — but hasn’t judged them worth spending crawl budget on yet. This is the most common indexing status new Shopify stores get stuck on, and it has its own set of fixes: strengthening internal links, consolidating thin pages, and using IndexNow to signal priority.

We wrote a dedicated guide for it: how to fix “Discovered but not crawled” on Shopify.

Stop waiting for Bing to find you. Bing SEO: IndexNow for Bing tells Bing about your pages the moment they change — automatically, for free.

Fix 6: Password-protected and dev stores never get indexed

This one catches a lot of new merchants. If your store still has Shopify’s storefront password enabled — the default for unlaunched and development stores — crawlers hit the password page and can go no further. A password-protected store cannot be indexed. Period.

Check it: Shopify admin → Online Store → Preferences → scroll to Password protection. If “Restrict access to visitors with the password” is ticked, Bing sees a locked door, no matter how many sitemaps you submit. Removing the password requires a paid Shopify plan — trial and development stores keep it on.

If your store was password-protected until recently, be patient after unlocking: Bing needs to re-crawl and discover the door is now open. Which brings us to timing.

Fix 7: Be patient with new domains — but push proactively with IndexNow

Two honest truths about Bing and new stores:

New domains take time. Bing is cautious with sites that have no history, no backlinks, and no engagement signals. A brand-new Shopify store can sit partially indexed for weeks even when everything is configured perfectly. That’s normal, not broken.

Bing applies quality thresholds. Pages that look thin — default template text, one-line product descriptions, near-duplicate variant pages — may be discovered and deliberately left unindexed. Fixing configuration won’t help if the content itself doesn’t clear the bar. Write real product descriptions; give Bing a reason to spend crawl budget on you.

What you can control is how quickly Bing learns about your URLs. That’s exactly what IndexNow exists for. It’s an open protocol (indexnow.org) — supported by Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep, though not Google — that lets your site push URL changes to search engines the instant they happen, instead of waiting for the crawler to come around.

You can wire up IndexNow manually on Shopify (our IndexNow setup guide shows how), but the manual route means hosting a key file and firing API calls yourself every time anything changes.

Or you let an app handle it. Bing SEO: IndexNow for Bing (by ArcSpeed, free, rated 4.6 stars from 29 reviews) auto-submits URLs to Bing and Yandex via IndexNow whenever your products, collections, pages, or blog posts change — and supports bulk submission of your existing URLs, which is exactly what you want when an entire catalog is sitting unindexed. See how it compares to alternatives in our roundup of IndexNow apps for Shopify.

Get your whole catalog in front of Bing. Bing SEO: IndexNow for Bing bulk-submits your existing URLs and pings Bing on every future change. Free to install.

Work through the fixes in order

Most stores that are truly “invisible” on Bing are fixed by verification, sitemap submission, or removing password protection (Fixes 1, 2, 6). Stores that are partially indexed usually need the “Discovered but not crawled” playbook plus IndexNow (Fixes 5 and 7). And once you’re indexed, the game shifts to ranking — a content and authority problem, covered in our Bing SEO for Shopify guide.

FAQ

How long does it take Bing to index a new Shopify store?

There’s no fixed timeline. Established domains with good signals can see pages indexed within days; brand-new domains often take considerably longer, and some pages may stay unindexed until the site earns more trust. Submitting a sitemap and using IndexNow shortens the discovery step, but Bing still decides when — and whether — to index each URL.

My store shows on Google but not Bing. Why?

Google and Bing run separate crawlers and separate indexes with different priorities. Being indexed on one says nothing about the other. The usual culprits: you set up Google Search Console but never touched Bing Webmaster Tools, or Bing simply hasn’t allocated crawl budget to your domain yet. Fixes 1, 2 and 7 above close that gap.

Does IndexNow guarantee my pages get indexed?

No. IndexNow guarantees Bing learns about your URLs immediately instead of waiting to discover them by crawling. Indexing remains Bing’s decision, based on its quality assessment of each page. Think of IndexNow as skipping the queue at the door — you still have to get past the bouncer.

Will indexing on Bing also get me into DuckDuckGo and ChatGPT search?

Bing’s index feeds DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Ecosia, ChatGPT search and Microsoft Copilot, so getting indexed by Bing is the entry ticket to that entire ecosystem. If AI-assistant visibility matters to you, see our guide on getting Shopify products into ChatGPT.

Do I need to remove my Shopify storefront password before doing anything else?

Yes. As long as the password is on, crawlers can’t see any page of your store, and every other fix in this guide is wasted effort. Remove it under Shopify admin → Online Store → Preferences, then submit your sitemap.