Neocities Blocked by Bing: A Domain-Wide Search Exclusion Raises Safety and Fairness Concerns

For the past several months, Microsoft's Bing search engine has implemented a complete domain-wide block of neocities.org, the popular web hosting platform that enables over 1.5 million independent creators to publish personal, artistic, educational, and experimental websites. This is not a minor ranking adjustment or temporary technical issue—the entire domain, including all user subdomains, has been entirely excluded from Bing's search index.

The Scope and Impact of the Block

The implications of this decision are far-reaching. When users search for content hosted on Neocities through Bing, they encounter a complete absence of results from the platform. This affects not only the main neocities.org site but every single user-created subdomain, from personal portfolios to educational resources to creative projects.

What makes this situation particularly concerning is that when Neocities discovered the block, Bing's search results were simultaneously displaying what appeared to be a phishing attack targeting the platform on the first page of search results. This creates a dangerous scenario where users searching for Neocities content might encounter malicious sites designed to exploit the platform's reputation.

While Bing eventually demoted the suspected phishing site after complaints, the fundamental issue remains unresolved: the entire Neocities domain continues to be blocked from search results. This creates an environment where malicious actors can more easily rank higher than legitimate Neocities content, since they face less competition from the blocked domain.

The Human Cost of Algorithmic Decisions

Behind the technical details are real people whose creative work has been rendered invisible on one of the world's major search engines. Neocities hosts billions of human visitors per month across its network of independent sites. These are not commercial operations or malicious actors—they are individuals sharing their passions, learning web development, creating art, and building communities.

The block affects educators who use Neocities to host learning materials, artists who showcase their portfolios, writers who publish their work, and countless others who have chosen this platform as their digital home. For many of these creators, search engine visibility is crucial for reaching their intended audience.

What This Block Is Not

Neocities has been explicit about clarifying what this situation is not:

• It is not the result of widespread malware or phishing activity on the platform
• It is not due to technical misconfigurations that Bing has identified
• It is not the result of policy violations that were meaningfully communicated to Neocities
• It is not because Neocities hasn't made multiple good-faith attempts to contact Bing for resolution
• It is not because of low-quality AI-generated content (of which Neocities has almost none)
• It is not due to suborigin issues that Bing's documentation indicates they understand

Neocities operates as a general-purpose web host, allowing users to publish HTML just like any other hosting provider. The platform maintains active and sophisticated moderation processes that remove the vast majority of malicious sites before they can even be indexed by search engines.

The Challenge of Communication

Despite repeated attempts to resolve this issue through Bing's official webmaster and support channels, as well as internal contacts, Microsoft has declined to reverse the block or provide a clear, actionable explanation for the decision. This lack of transparency and communication has left Neocities with no clear path to resolution through official channels.

Broader Implications for the Web

This situation raises important questions about the power that search engines wield over web visibility and the lack of accountability mechanisms when they make sweeping decisions that affect millions of independent creators. When a single company can render an entire platform's content invisible across its search results, it demonstrates the concentrated power within the search ecosystem.

The issue also highlights the interconnected nature of search engines, as other search providers that source their results from Bing—including DuckDuckGo—are similarly affected by this block. This creates a cascading effect where a decision by one company can impact multiple search experiences across the web.

Recommendations and Moving Forward

In light of these circumstances, Neocities is recommending that its users and the broader internet community avoid using Bing or search engines that source results from Bing until this issue is resolved. The platform emphasizes that Neocities sites continue to be indexed normally by most major search engines, including Google.

For users who rely on Bing or Bing-powered search engines, it's important to understand that Neocities sites will not appear in search results regardless of their content quality, originality, or compliance with webmaster guidelines. Additionally, any Neocities-like sites that do appear in these results should be treated with caution, as they may be active phishing attempts.

This public disclosure represents a last resort for Neocities after months of attempting to engage constructively with Bing through multiple channels. The decision to go public was made reluctantly, as the platform would have preferred to resolve the issue quietly and maintain positive relationships with search engine providers.

The Path to Resolution

Neocities has expressed willingness to engage with Bing or Microsoft staff who can address this issue. The platform remains hopeful that this public disclosure will lead to meaningful dialogue and ultimately a reversal of the block.

Until then, the situation serves as a reminder of the importance of search engine diversity and the need for transparency and due process when major platforms make decisions that can dramatically impact web visibility. For the millions of independent creators who call Neocities home, the hope is that their work will once again be discoverable through all major search engines, allowing them to continue sharing their creativity with the world.