IndexNow explained: tell Bing about new pages, and who doesn't use it

Last updated 9 October 2026

By the FocalScore team at Astrolabix LLC. First published 9 October 2026. Sources last checked October 2026.

The short answer

IndexNow lets your site tell search engines the moment a page is added, changed or deleted, instead of waiting for them to notice. Bing and several other engines use it; Google is not one of them. On many platforms it is a switch or a plugin rather than a job for a developer. It tells engines about a change; it does not guarantee they will index the page.

What IndexNow is

An open protocol: your site (or your platform, plugin or CDN) sends a short message listing the addresses that changed, and proves the message came from you with a key file on your site. IndexNow.org says you only need to send it to one participating engine, and the submission is shared with all the others.

What it doesn't do: IndexNow.org says submitting a URL does not guarantee immediate indexing. Each engine still decides whether, and when, to crawl the page, by its own rules and quality signals.

Who uses it, and who doesn't

The participating search engines listed on IndexNow.org include Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yep and Amazon. Google is not among them.

For Google, the equivalent tools are a sitemap and Search Console. Submit your sitemap in Search Console's Sitemaps report or name it in your robots.txt. Keep its expectations modest: Google says a sitemap is a hint, not a guarantee; it uses the <lastmod> date only when that date is consistently accurate, and it ignores <priority> and <changefreq>.

How the key file works

The key proves you own the site. The rules, from the IndexNow documentation and FAQ:

The key is 8 to 128 characters: letters a–z and A–Z, digits 0–9 and hyphens.
The file is named after the key with .txt on the end and sits at the root of your site, for example https://yoursite.com/abcd1234efgh.txt. It must load without a login.
The text inside the file must exactly match the key, in UTF-8.
You can host the file somewhere else and say where with keyLocation, but then it only covers addresses in that folder: a key at /catalog/ can submit only pages under /catalog/.

How to switch it on

The easy way is a platform that does it for you. Bing's IndexNow page lists platforms with support built in or available as an add-on, including Wix, Duda, GoDaddy and Shopify; the Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO and SEOPress plugins for WordPress; and Cloudflare, whose Crawler Hints setting sends IndexNow notifications when your content changes.

To do it yourself:

Make a key that follows the rules above and publish the key file at the root of your site.
When a page changes, send its address to a participating engine. A single address can go in one request: https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=PAGE&key=YOUR-KEY. For many at once, send a POST with your host, key and a list of up to 10,000 addresses.
Read the answer: 200 means received (not indexed), 202 means received with the key still to be checked, 403 means the key file didn't validate, 422 means the addresses don't belong to the host or don't match the key, and 429 means too many requests.
Bing Webmaster Tools shows the addresses Bing received.

Common mistakes

The key file doesn't load: it redirects to the homepage, sits behind a login, or returns your site's "page not found" page.
The file's contents don't match the key, or the file holds a different key from the one your plugin submits.
Submitting pages that haven't changed. Bing asks you to submit only addresses added, updated or deleted since you started using IndexNow.
Submitting addresses from another host, such as www. pages under a key for the bare domain. That is a 422.
Expecting it to help in Google. It doesn't; keep your sitemap accurate for that.

How to check yours

Run the free IndexNow key checker. It looks for your key file, or checks the key you paste, and confirms the file is served the way the IndexNow engines require. Your sitemap is covered by the free scan, and the sitemap line in robots.txt by the robots.txt checker; see the robots.txt guide for how that line should look.

Checklist

Your platform, plugin or CDN has IndexNow switched on, or you submit changes yourself.
The key file loads at your site's root and contains exactly the key.
Only changed, added or deleted addresses are submitted.
Submitted addresses are on the same host as the key.
Your sitemap is accurate and submitted in Google Search Console.

What the free scan checks for this

These are the FocalScore checks that cover this guide's subject. Each one in your report says what it found, shows the evidence and gives the fix.

IndexNow key file is valid
XML sitemap
The sitemap in robots.txt loads
Sitemap freshness dates

Sources

Last checked October 2026. Documentation, settings and rules change; if one of these pages now says something different, it is right and this guide is out of date. Tell us at info@focalscore.com.