IndexNow: report changes yourself

Search engines visit at their own pace. With IndexNow, your site reports for itself that a page is new, changed or deleted. Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver and a few other search engines take part. A report to one of them is shared with the rest. Google does not take part. For Google, your sitemap and Google Search Console remain the way to go.

A report is an invitation to come and take a look. It's no guarantee that the page will appear in the search results straight away.

How does a search engine know the report comes from you?

Your site has a key: a string of 8 to 128 letters, numbers or hyphens. The root folder of your site contains a text file with that key as both its name and its content, for example https://jouwdomein.nl/3f9a1c7d2b6e4a8f9c0d1e2f3a4b5c6d.txt. With every report, your site sends the key along, and the search engine checks that the file matches.

AI Builder: it happens automatically

The AI Builder creates a fixed key for each site and places the key file in the web folder. After every publication, it reports the pages to IndexNow. You don't need to do anything.

No report is sent if your site is set to not findable (see Sitemap and robots.txt with the AI Builder), nor for a free website on one of our addresses.

WordPress: with a plugin

WordPress doesn't report anything to IndexNow by itself. You'll need a plugin for that:

• The IndexNow plugin from the Bing Webmaster Tools team.
• Or an SEO plugin with IndexNow built in. Check your plugin's settings.

Choose one. Two plugins that both send reports just means double the work.

Checking

• In Bing Webmaster Tools, the IndexNow section shows which addresses your site has reported.
• If you know the key, open the key file in your browser. You should see exactly the key, with nothing else.

Tip: Only report real changes. Reporting the same unchanged page over and over doesn't help. A good plugin handles this properly by itself.