IndexNow Submitter

To submit URLs to IndexNow, you need three things: a key, a text file with that key on your site, and a list of addresses that changed. This IndexNow Submitter does all three in one place. It makes a key in your browser if you have none, checks that the key file answers on your site, and sends your URLs to the shared IndexNow endpoint, which passes them on to every search engine that takes part.

What is IndexNow?

IndexNow is an open protocol that Microsoft Bing and Yandex started in October 2021. Instead of waiting for a crawler to come back, your site tells search engines "these pages are new, changed or deleted". One submission reaches all the engines that take part, because they share the URLs with each other.

Today that list includes Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep. Bing's results also feed other services, such as DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, so a fast update in Bing can matter more than its own market share suggests.

One thing has to be clear from the start: Google does not use IndexNow. Google tested it in 2021 but has not joined. For Google you still need a sitemap, good internal links and, for single pages, the URL Inspection tool in Search Console.

How to submit URLs to IndexNow with this tool

1. Get a key. If you already use IndexNow through Bing Webmaster Tools, Yoast, Rank Math or a Cloudflare setting, choose "I already have a key" and paste it. If not, choose "Make one here". The tool makes a random 32-character key in your browser and offers it as a .txt file. Nothing is sent to our server in this step.
2. Upload the key file. Put the file in the root of your site, so it opens at https://example.com/your-key.txt. The file must contain the key and nothing else. If you keep it somewhere else on the same host, enter that address as the key location.
3. Check the file. Click "Check the file". Our server opens it and compares the text with your key. The tool also looks at your home page and robots.txt to warn you about a noindex tag or a blocked Bingbot, because sending URLs that cannot be crawled wastes your quota.
4. Add the URLs. One address per line, all on the same host as the key. Only send pages that really changed: new posts, edited pages, or deleted pages that now answer 404 or 410.
5. Send them. The tool posts the list to api.indexnow.org and shows the answer code with a plain-English meaning.

The free level sends up to 100 URLs a day. The PRO level sends up to 10,000 at once, the most the protocol accepts in one request, and can load URLs straight from your sitemap, keeping only pages with a recent lastmod date. Results can be downloaded as CSV.

What the answer codes mean

A 200 or 202 means the message arrived. It does not mean the page is indexed. Each search engine still decides when to crawl and whether to keep the page.

When IndexNow helps, and when it does not

• Helps: new articles, price or stock changes, fixed errors, removed pages. Bing and the other engines hear about them right away instead of on their next crawl.
• Helps: sites that change often. You name the pages that changed instead of waiting for a crawler to find them.
• Does not help: thin or duplicate pages. A ping does not make a weak page worth indexing.
• Does not help: Google. Use Search Console for Google.
• Hurts if abused: sending the same unchanged URLs every day. The protocol asks you to submit only real changes.

On my own sites, many older pages stayed unindexed for years, even with internal links pointing at them, and I asked for indexing one page at a time in Search Console. I never paid for an indexing service. IndexNow is free and honest about what it does: it tells search engines a page changed. That is all a submission tool should promise.

IndexNow and webmaster tools for each search engine

Bing Webmaster Tools shows how many URLs it received through IndexNow and when. That is the best place to confirm that your submissions arrive.

Keep your key safe, but do not panic about it

The key is not a password. Anyone can read it, because it sits in a public file on your site. It only proves that whoever sends URLs for your host can also put a file on it. If you think someone misuses it, make a new key, upload the new file and delete the old one. The tool keeps your key only in your own browser.

Before you send, run the page through our Indexability Checker if you are not sure it can be indexed, and test your crawl rules with the Robots.txt Tester. Then submit URLs to IndexNow only when they change, and let Bing and the other engines do the rest.

Frequently asked questions