IndexNow Protocol Implementation

What IndexNow does and why it matters

IndexNow is an open protocol that flips crawling from pull to push. Normally a search engine decides when to revisit your pages, and a new or updated URL can sit undiscovered for hours or days. With IndexNow you tell participating engines the moment something changes, and they fetch it on their own schedule but much sooner. Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Seznam, and Naver participate, and because they share submissions, a single ping reaches all of them. Google publicly announced it was testing IndexNow, but it has never confirmed the protocol as a live indexing input, so plan your gains around Bing and the other confirmed engines rather than Google.

The practical payoff is faster discovery for time sensitive content and better crawl efficiency for large sites. You are effectively pointing crawlers at exactly the URLs that changed, which spares them from rediscovering updates by recrawling everything. That plays directly into how you manage crawl budget on big properties.

Step 1: create and host your key

Generate an API key that is a hexadecimal string of 8 to 128 characters. Save it in a plain text file whose name is the key itself, for example a1b2c3d4e5f6.txt, and the file body must contain the same key as plain text. Host that file at the root of your domain so it resolves at https://example.com/a1b2c3d4e5f6.txt. When you submit URLs, you reference this file with the keyLocation field, and the engine fetches it to confirm you own the domain. You can host multiple keys if you manage several sections or subdomains.

Step 2: submit changed URLs

For a single URL you can send a simple GET request: https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://example.com/page&key=a1b2c3d4e5f6. For batches, POST a JSON body to https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow with Content-Type: application/json. The body carries host, key, keyLocation, and a urlList array of up to 10,000 URLs. A 200 response means the submission was accepted; a 422 usually means a URL does not match the host or the key failed validation. Submit URLs when content is added, meaningfully updated, or removed, and skip unchanged pages, because repeatedly pinging stale URLs can get your key throttled or ignored.

Engine support at a glance

Automating it without writing code

Most sites never touch the raw API. Rank Math and Yoast can fire IndexNow submissions automatically when you publish or update a post, and Cloudflare offers a one click integration that submits URLs at the edge. Our companion guide on IndexNow instant indexing walks through the plugin route. If you run a custom stack, hook the submission into your publish pipeline so every deploy that changes URLs sends a batch automatically. Pair that with a healthy XML sitemap, which remains the baseline discovery method even after you add IndexNow.

Verifying and troubleshooting

After you submit, confirm the key file is reachable in a browser and returns the exact key as plain text. In Bing Webmaster Tools you can see IndexNow submissions and any errors, which is the fastest way to catch a mismatched host or an unreachable key file. Common failures are a key file behind a redirect, a urlList that mixes domains, or URLs that are blocked by robots rules or carry a noindex directive, in which case the ping is wasted because the page cannot be indexed anyway. Treat IndexNow as an accelerator layered on top of solid indexation hygiene, not a replacement for it.

Frequently asked questions