Module 2 · 2.5

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Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow

Module 2: Search Console, Bing and IndexNow · Reading time: 12 minutes

Learning objective: After this lesson you can add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools (including by importing it from Search Console), explain how IndexNow works, and check whether your site's IndexNow key file is correct.

Key concepts: Bing Webmaster Tools, Bingbot, importing from Google Search Console, verification (XML file BingSiteAuth.xml, meta tag msvalidate.01, CNAME to verify.bing.com), search engines that use Bing results, IndexNow, key, key file, keyLocation, participating search engines

Why Bing matters too

In the Netherlands, most people use Google. Even so, Bing is worth your time, for three reasons. First, people use Bing without knowing it: it is the default search engine in Microsoft Edge. Second, other search engines rely on Bing. DuckDuckGo says it gets most of its regular web results from Bing, and Ecosia shows Bing results by default (in some countries and browsers it shows Google's). Third, it's very little work: if your site is already in Search Console, you can have it in Bing within a few minutes.

Bing Webmaster Tools is to Bing what Search Console is to Google: free, with reports on search performance, indexing and sitemaps, plus the option to inspect a single address. The names and layout differ, but the idea is the same.

Adding your site

There are two ways.

1. Import from Google Search Console (recommended). Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools, choose Import and sign in with the Google account you use for Search Console. Once you give permission, Bing shows the sites you have verified in Search Console, along with their sitemaps. Select the sites and import them. Bing then verifies them itself: you don't need to add anything to your DNS. Bing also takes over your sitemaps and regularly rechecks ownership through Search Console afterwards. According to Bing, you can import up to 100 sites at a time; it can take up to 48 hours before traffic data appears. If you later revoke Bing's access to Search Console, you will need to verify in another way.

2. Add and verify manually. Enter your site's address and choose one of these methods:

Method	What you do
XML file	You place the `BingSiteAuth.xml` file that Bing gives you in the root folder of your site
Meta tag	You add a line `<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="...">` to the `<head>` of your homepage
DNS (CNAME)	You create a CNAME record with the code Bing gives you as the name and `verify.bing.com` as the target

For the DNS method, you would add something like:

1a2b3c4d5e6f.example.com.  3600  IN  CNAME  verify.bing.com.

Note the difference from Google: there it's a TXT record on the domain itself, here it's a CNAME on a name of its own. A CNAME may never be placed on the bare domain (@) (DNS course, lesson 3.2); that isn't needed here either, because the name is the code. If you add the record in a panel that automatically appends the domain name, type only the code as the name. With some registrars, Bing can also add the record itself after you sign in to that registrar.

After that, submit your sitemap to Bing as well, if it wasn't already brought over by the import.

IndexNow: reporting changes yourself

Search engines visit at their own pace. If you change a price or publish a new page, it can take a while before a crawler notices. IndexNow is an open protocol that lets a site report for itself: "these addresses are new, changed or deleted". indexnow.org lists Amazon, Bing, Naver, Seznam, Yandex and Yep as participants. Google does not take part: for Google, the sitemap and Search Console remain the way to go.

A handy feature: if you report an address to one participant, it is shared with all the other participants. So you only need to report it once.

How does a site prove the report comes from it?

Anyone could claim that someone else's pages have changed. That's why IndexNow works with a key:

The site chooses a key: 8 to 128 characters, only letters (a-z, A-Z), digits and the hyphen.
The site places a text file containing exactly that key in the root folder, with the key as its name: https://www.example.com/<key>.txt (UTF-8).
With every report, the site sends the key along. The search engine fetches the file and checks whether the key matches.

The file may also be somewhere else on the same host; the report must then use keyLocation to say where. But be careful: a key file in a subfolder (for example /catalogus/) only applies to addresses under that folder. If you want to keep things simple, put it in the root folder.

A report looks like this (your site's software does this, not you by hand):

POST https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8

{"host": "www.example.com",
 "key": "3f9a1c7d2b6e4a8f9c0d1e2f3a4b5c6d",
 "keyLocation": "https://www.example.com/3f9a1c7d2b6e4a8f9c0d1e2f3a4b5c6d.txt",
 "urlList": ["https://www.example.com/bruidswerk/", "https://www.example.com/workshops/"]}

Each report can include up to 10,000 addresses. The response is a status code: 200 (received), 202 (received, key still being checked), 403 (key not found or incorrect), 422 (addresses don't belong to the host), 429 (too many reports).

What IndexNow doesn't do

A report is an invitation to come and look, not an instruction to include the page. indexnow.org says it plainly: submitting does not guarantee immediate indexing. Only report real changes; reporting the same unchanged page over and over doesn't help and may be seen as abuse (code 429).

In practice: who reports for you?

You rarely need to build IndexNow yourself. WebOké's AI Builder creates a fixed key for each site, places the key file in the web folder and reports the changed pages to IndexNow after every publication; not for a free demo, and not if the site is set to "do not index". For WordPress there is, among others, the IndexNow plugin from the Bing Webmaster Tools team, and some SEO plugins have it built in. Other website builders and some CDNs offer it too. Want to know whether it works for you? Look up the key file: if it's there and contains exactly the key, your site can send reports.

Summary

Bing matters too: through Edge, and because DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, among others, rely (partly) on Bing.
Import your site from Search Console into Bing Webmaster Tools: it is verified straight away and the sitemaps come along.
You can verify manually with BingSiteAuth.xml, the meta tag msvalidate.01 or a CNAME from the code to verify.bing.com.
IndexNow reports changes to all participating search engines at once; Google does not take part.
The key file <key>.txt contains exactly the key; a report does not guarantee inclusion.

Quiz

Exercise

Exercise A2.5: Is your IndexNow key correct? Enter your site and the IndexNow key your website builder or plugin uses (in WordPress you'll find it in the plugin's settings; with the AI Builder it's the name of the 32-character .txt file in the root folder). If your key file is not in the root folder, also enter its full address. The program checks whether the key has the right format and whether the file exists and contains exactly the key. The program itself never sends a report.

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