Submit URLs to IndexNow

How to use the tool

Click “Generate a key”, then “Download the key file”: you get a text file named after the key, holding only the key. Put it at the root of your site, at the address the tool shows under the list. Then paste your URLs, one per line: the submission host is that of the first one.

“Check the key file” reads the file on your site and says whether it contains the key. “Submit to IndexNow” repeats that reading and only sends the URLs if the file is in place. Nothing is sent otherwise.

What IndexNow is

It is a notification protocol: instead of waiting for a bot to come back, the site itself reports the URLs it has just added, updated or deleted. Bing introduced it on October 18, 2021, with Yandex.⁴ Notifying one engine that adopted it notifies all the others.⁴²

The site proves it owns the URLs with a key: a text file at the root of the host, named after the key, which contains it. The key is 8 to 128 characters long, letters, digits and dashes.¹ A file elsewhere on the same host is possible with the keyLocation parameter, but it only covers the URLs in its folder.¹ The tool uses the root location.

The engines that take part

The indexnow.org FAQ lists endpoints for Amazon, Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep, plus a general endpoint, api.indexnow.org, which the tool uses.² A submission counts for every engine that adopted IndexNow.²

Google does not appear in that list. Neither the IndexNow FAQ nor Bing’s announcement, which I read, mentions it, and I did not read a Google page on the subject: to be checked with Google before drawing a conclusion. For Google, the channel described in its documentation remains the sitemap, which the XML sitemap validator checks.

What the tool checks

First the key: its form, then the file at the expected address. A 404 means the file is missing. An HTML page served with a 200 status instead is a common trap: the site returns a fallback page for any unknown address, and the engine does not find the key in it. A file that contains the key and something else is flagged.

Then the URL list: each line must be a readable http or https address, under 2,048 characters, on the same host as the first. The documentation allows mixing http and https in one request and rejects any other host with a 422 status.¹ Duplicates and surplus URLs are left out, with their reason.

The response codes

A 200 means the engine received the URLs, nothing more.¹ A 202 says the key is not yet validated. A 400 flags an invalid request format, a 403 an invalid key (file not found or key missing from the file), a 422 URLs from another host or a key that does not match the schema, a 429 too many requests, which the engine may take for spam.¹³

No code promises indexing. Bing writes it: a submission guarantees neither crawling nor indexing, and changes may take time to appear.³ The IndexNow FAQ adds that a submission does not guarantee immediate indexing.²

What to submit, and when

IndexNow is built for URLs that were added, updated or deleted. The FAQ says to also submit redirected URLs and those answering 404 or 410, and advises against sending a whole site at once: for that it points to sitemaps.² Each engine sets its own daily thresholds per site, unpublished, and the FAQ suggests waiting at least 5 minutes before resubmitting the same URL.²

Bing specifies to only submit URLs changed since you started using IndexNow: older ones need not be published.³ Many CMSs and plugins already do it, and Cloudflare supports it: check before configuring by hand.³

What the tool does not do

The tool submits 100 URLs at most per request, by choice: the protocol accepts 10,000.¹ It does not read your sitemap, does not track what was taken into account and does not use keyLocation. The key file is read over https, three redirects at most.

Each check or submission counts as one request against a quota of 20 per 10-minute window and per visitor, shared with the site’s other tools. The server keeps neither the key nor the URLs.

After the submission

Submitting does not replace a well-crawled site. Check that the pages answer as planned with the redirect checker, and read the article on the XML sitemap for the channel Google documents. For Bing and its partner engines, IndexNow complements the sitemap.

Frequently asked questions