What IndexNow is and how to set it up

Normally a search engine finds out that a page changed by visiting the page again, and that can take days or weeks. IndexNow reverses this. You tell the search engine yourself, right after you publish.

Who uses it

Bing and several other search engines take part. When you notify one participating engine, it shares the notice with the others. Google does not use IndexNow, so for Google you still rely on Search Console and your sitemap.

Because Bing feeds ChatGPT search and Microsoft Copilot, IndexNow is one of the fastest ways to get a new page in front of those tools.

The two parts

1. A key file. You create a short key, a string of letters and numbers. You then publish a text file at the top of your site, named after the key, that contains only the key. It proves the site is yours.

Example: if your key is abc123, the file lives at yourdomain.com/abc123.txt and contains the text abc123.

You can generate a key at bing.com/indexnow.

2. A ping after every deploy. Each time you publish or change a page, send a request that names the page and includes the key:

https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://yourdomain.com/PAGE&key=abc123

Add the ping to the deploy step, so it runs on its own after every deploy. Pages changed together can be sent in one request.

Check it worked

1. Open yourdomain.com/[your-key].txt in a browser. It shows the key and nothing else.
2. Send a test ping for one page.
3. In Bing Webmaster Tools, look for the submission under IndexNow.

Two cautions

• Keep the key file deployed. If a redesign removes it, the pings stop working.
• Ping only pages that changed. Sending the whole site every time adds noise and gains nothing.

This is one of 52 checks in the Business Website Launch Checklist, in the chapter Get Found on Google and Bing.