PoochKingdom

I reported to Squarespace support that Bing is most likely not indexing most Squarespace pages due to invalid HTML in <img> tags - where the user has taken the time to populate the alt tags in their images.
Squarespace includes two alt tags: one empty, and one populated. Bing doesn't like it, my research appears to show. Google ignores the issue; Bing does not.
I have asked for a high priority fix as this probably affects a large number of Squarespace users. You can only see the offending tags when you right-click -> view page source in the browser; it does not show in the developer consoles because the DOM is already fixed after page loading.
During the initial crawl by Bing and Google, they analyze the raw HTML page. Microsoft is generally more pedantic on standards, so my hypothesis is that Bing sees the invalid HTML and tags the error incorrectly. It appears as an empty alt tag warning, when actually there are two tags in the same element and this is invalid HTML.
Because of this, 100% of my product pages are not indexed by Bing. 
I encourage you to contact support if you're still having problems with your site.

Well, I may as well update the thread for completeness. Part of my sitemap scan on Bing Webmaster showed that https://poochkingdom.com/contact was not indexed because it is a redirected page, which I'm pretty certain it isn't. I used the Bing Webmaster tool to send a support request asking why they think it is redirected. In return, I got a fairly generic message saying that https://poochkingdom.com is indexed so you're problem is solved. Responding to the email to ask why they didn't answer my question in the first place, I get the following:
550 5.4.1 Recipient address rejected: Access denied. AS(201806281) [BL2NAM06FT012.Eop-nam06.prod.protection.outlook.com 2024-06-06T04:30:08.708Z 08DC85DF80299C6D]
I guess that's Microsoft for "we don't care". So I'm left with a bunch of unsolvable 400-499 errors, and no way to understand why Bing Webmaster tools thinks this way.

Still no Tablet Viewport 😔 come on squarespace its 2024

I ended up building two versions myself to embed reviews into my wife's website:
The first used JavaScript with the Google Maps API and Google Places API, and I embedded this on the page using a tool called slick slider. It is a total coding solution, and the Google Places API only gives you the last five reviews.
My second version uses JavaScript and a Google Cloud Function, where it uses a service account to access the Google My Business API (which I had to request separately) using OAuth2. It was a challenge to get it working, but it works well now it is in place. I am able to get all of the reviews, and can code for the future. I retrofitted this into the same slick slider for convenience sake.
If you're not a coder, then one of the popular embedding solutions like Elfsight would be better for you. Depending on the popularity of your website, you can be paying between $50 and $100 per year, depending on what you would like to implement.

Hey PoochKingdom, thanks for the response! I figured that would be the case. Cheers!

Hello,
If you haven't sorted this already, you need to use Javascript to generate the date - won't work with PHP. I believe the date is used by Google to send the review to the cusomer so it needn't be too specific, in this example I've just added 7 days to the current date:
<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js?onload=renderOptIn" async defer></script> <script>   window.renderOptIn = function() {     window.gapi.load('surveyoptin', function() {       const deliveryDate = new Date();       deliveryDate.setDate(deliveryDate.getDate() + 7);       function formatDate(date) {         var d = new Date(date),         month = '' + (d.getMonth() + 1),         day = '' + d.getDate(),         year = d.getFullYear();         if (month.length < 2)                 month = '0' + month;         if (day.length < 2)              day = '0' + day;         return [year, month, day].join('-');     }              window.gapi.surveyoptin.render(         {           // REQUIRED FIELDS           "merchant_id": 12345678,           "order_id": "{orderId}",           "email": "{customerEmailAddress}",           "delivery_country": "GB",           "estimated_delivery_date": formatDate(deliveryDate)           // OPTIONAL FIELDS           //"products": [{"gtin":"GTIN1"}, {"gtin":"GTIN2"}]         });     });   } </script> Hope it helps

I'm very new to this SEO stuff, and I've been using the Ahrefs free Firefox plugin to check my own page structure: SEO titles, descriptions, headings, etc. I'm attaching two screenshots I took of your Home page, and About page.
The Home page shows your headings are out of sequence; Ahrefs claims the first heading should be H1, and it is not the case for you. Since I am new to the SEO topic, I'm tending to believe the tooling; I don't know if the crawlers actually care about the order of the headers but the warning is there.
The About page has a very long description. This is probably because you have not filled out the SEO Description in the page settings -> SEO -> SEO Title and Description. My understanding is that the description factors heavily in the indexing algorithm.
If you have your old version of the site, you can go back and check how it was set up to compare how your new template has affected your page structure and SEO-related configuration withing Squarespace.
I hope some of the more seasoned SEO experts weigh in for you, but I hope this helps you in small way. I would install the tool and check all of your pages; you can even sign up for the free version of the Ahrefs too and perform a site audit to gain more insights into you dilemma.

I was a lead technical consultant for a software integration startup that was a low-code solution. We were asked to see if we could pull from Google's Gadget API (brand new in 2008/2009) and get/put data into SAP and Salesforce. I had to learn and implement OAuth 1.0a in our platform. It was a challenge then, and is still a challenge now for headless integration; we were an appliance-based solution.
I face the same challenge today, because I'm trying to figure out how to implement the Google My Business API in our site without exposing the keys, and use it to serve up all the reviews from our Google Business listing. It requires OAuth 2.0, but I don't want any user interaction where you have to approve logins, etc. That's for another day...

Agreed, though Google already has a bulk submission API that's OAuth based. I am not sure if they will adopt IndexNow, because they are pretty set in their ways; I worked with Google on early OAuth 1.0a projects in 2009, so that's their preferred method.

I just tested a POST to https://api.indexnow.org and it worked with no problem. The body is JSON
{ "host": "<host>.com", "key": "<key>", "keyLocation": "https://<host>.com/<key>.txt", "urlList": [ "https://<host>.com/home", "https://<host>.com/about", ... "https://<host>.com/..." ] }  

That did it! It never occurred to me to 301 to the static page directly. You guys are awesome! Thanks!

Got it! Thanks. I missed that nuance.

That did it! It never occurred to me to 301 to the static page directly. You guys are awesome! Thanks!

All Squarespace static asset will be redirects to their CDN, include the file on my domain beyondspace.studio, I can send the verification URL of my domain to your PM for confirming
Almost instantly for me, at least, but I think the time will vary for different site
 
It did work for me, either I used direct HTTP request, pageIndexer,io or an internal SEO tool, it still accept the key on 301 redirection. 202 mean the key is pending on verification, suggestions are:
- Wait a bit until try again
- If it not working, use Bing Indexnow to regenerate the key - Remove the old redirect and upload new key
- Use the asset direct URL, as instructed on this post in Option 2 - use XML file, when verify with Bing webmaster, I had to use the real path of the file, instead of /s/ in URL mapping
This instruction link has slightly different method to mimic root directory upload, that it track the /s/file to its source and use the direction directly from `/file.xml -> static1.squarespace/file.xml 301`
Let me know how it goes....

Got it! Thanks. I missed that nuance.

My key is loaded to /s/<key.txt>, and I have a 301 redirect from / to -> /s/, which in turn leads to https://static1.squarespace.com/static/..../<key>.txt. If I hit the URL from a browser, the key is downloaded.
I have a second version of the same key loaded to /s/MyKey-<key.txt>, and I have a 301 redirect from / to -> /s/, which in turn leads to https://static1.squarespace.com/static/..../MyKey-<key>.txt. If I hit the URL from a browser, the key is downloaded.
Tests and results from Postman:
 
From Postman GET https://ssl.bing.com/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx> returns HTTP 202 GET https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx> returns HTTP 202 GET https://yandex.com/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx> returns HTTP 202 GET https://ssl.bing.com/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx>&keyLocation=https://<host>.com/[<key.txt>|<MyKey-<key.txt>] returns HTTP 202 GET https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx>&keyLocation=https://<host>.com/[<key.txt>|<MyKey-<key.txt>] returns HTTP 202 GET https://yandex.com/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx>&keyLocation=https://<host>.com/[<key.txt>|<MyKey-<key.txt>] returns HTTP 202 Failures GET https://ssl.bing.com/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx>&keyLocation=https://static1...com/[<key.txt>|<MyKey-<key.txt>] returns HTTP 422 GET https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx>&keyLocation=https://static1.com/[<key.txt>|<MyKey-<key.txt>] returns HTTP 422 GET https://yandex.com/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx>&keyLocation=https://static1.com/[<key.txt>|<MyKey-<key.txt>] returns HTTP 422 The error is Invalid Key Location, which is to be expected as they key is not delivered from the same host as the url specified From Firefox https://ssl.bing.com/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx> returns HTTP 202 https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx> returns HTTP 202 https://yandex.com/indexnow?url=https://<host>.com&key=<xxx> returns HTTP 202 I guess I wait and see if I get verified overnight.
My Bing Webmaster was verified through Google Search Console; Bing says I have nothing more to do on that front. Thanks again for your advice.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I tested with Postman and just a verify with Firefox, too. I'll update you later this evening with my results.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I tested with Postman and just a verify with Firefox, too. I'll update you later this evening with my results.

I have tried this multiple times and it does not work for me. I've tried the 301 with the .txt file; I've tried a keyLocation variation. In all cases, I get a 202 response. How long does verification take normally? I want to make sure I'm not being impatient.
FYI. I tried Ahrefs tool, and even they do not validate the key, despite the automatic link they provide downloading the key just fine. I can only assume that the basic rules of IndexNow apply: the key must line up with the domain it is tied to, and the Squarespace redirects ultimately lead to a https://static1.squarespace.com, not (in my case) https://poochkingdom.com.

I've made my decision, after a ton of reading Reddit and other blogs, to switch *all* my domains to Porkbun. I sent them an email this morning, (Sunday) and they replied to me within an hour or two. That was good enough for me. $11 a year, and they have support by phone, email, and live chat.

SquareSpace has shown me enough (nothing at all) to run from them as fast as my keyboard can take me. 

This way, I have same day support on DNS and SSL issues (which I am currently suffering issues with), and I will (for now) leave the site that I built here on SquareSpace that I prepaid for 12 months anyway. 

It was a great feeling doing a few transfers this morning from GoDaddy (I also had domains still registered there), since GoDaddy at least gives you an instant transfer auth #... Those on SquareSpace I elected to transfer out, tells me I need to wait 24 hours for a transfer #... (Big Surprise there!)

So Bye bye SquareSpace, as far as my domain registrar...    Hopefully I won't need help with the actual histed site I leave here (for now), because I know I'd never see it. 

Well, I may as well update the thread for completeness. Part of my sitemap scan on Bing Webmaster showed that https://poochkingdom.com/contact was not indexed because it is a redirected page, which I'm pretty certain it isn't. I used the Bing Webmaster tool to send a support request asking why they think it is redirected. In return, I got a fairly generic message saying that https://poochkingdom.com is indexed so you're problem is solved. Responding to the email to ask why they didn't answer my question in the first place, I get the following:
550 5.4.1 Recipient address rejected: Access denied. AS(201806281) [BL2NAM06FT012.Eop-nam06.prod.protection.outlook.com 2024-06-06T04:30:08.708Z 08DC85DF80299C6D]
I guess that's Microsoft for "we don't care". So I'm left with a bunch of unsolvable 400-499 errors, and no way to understand why Bing Webmaster tools thinks this way.

I reported to Squarespace support that Bing is most likely not indexing most Squarespace pages due to invalid HTML in <img> tags - where the user has taken the time to populate the alt tags in their images.
Squarespace includes two alt tags: one empty, and one populated. Bing doesn't like it, my research appears to show. Google ignores the issue; Bing does not.
I have asked for a high priority fix as this probably affects a large number of Squarespace users. You can only see the offending tags when you right-click -> view page source in the browser; it does not show in the developer consoles because the DOM is already fixed after page loading.
During the initial crawl by Bing and Google, they analyze the raw HTML page. Microsoft is generally more pedantic on standards, so my hypothesis is that Bing sees the invalid HTML and tags the error incorrectly. It appears as an empty alt tag warning, when actually there are two tags in the same element and this is invalid HTML.
Because of this, 100% of my product pages are not indexed by Bing. 
I encourage you to contact support if you're still having problems with your site.

Squarespace has quickly become THE WORST online platform to build a website. I've tried to steer many people towards Wix which allows unfiltered customization without code. It's completely ridiculous to expect paying customers to know code if they want to customize their site on a site building platform.
Want to change something on mobile but not desktop? Use Wix. Want to change a single font that is not part of your theme? Use Wix. Want to have a hover function on a sub nav? Use Wix. Want to do literally anything outside the realm of a strict template? USE WIX.
Every single one of these issues is a single click away on Wix. On Squarespace it is a matter of Googling your problem (not to mention you have to have know the specific terminology for your problem), find your code that is specific to someone else's site, download an extension to find out a block-id number, enter in custom code, see that the custom code fails, repeat steps until you find code that works. All for the simple fix of what — changing a font size? Making a gallery show three images instead of two on mobile? If these changes aren't a single click away then what is the point of offering a web building platform?
And no, Squarespace does not help at all with these problems, you rely on a completely user based forum for the entirety of your website to function. What a joke. I will steer every client to Wix.

It would also be great to see a tablet & laptop breakpoint not just desktop and mobile. 
The websites look horrible on iPads especially buttons and spacing. It's so disappointing that a major service like squarespace doesn't have these basic functions.

Sad to see there is still no tablet viewport in 2024. Websites on iPad look appalling.