Configure and verify an IndexNow key file to authenticate URL submissions to Bing and Yandex
domain: indexnow · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Generate a random alphanumeric key (the specification recommends at least 8 characters; 32 hex characters is a common safe choice)
Create a plain text file named exactly YOUR_KEY.txt containing only the key string and place it at the root of your domain so it is accessible at https://yourdomain.com/YOUR_KEY.txt
Optionally host the key file in a subdirectory if you need to scope submissions to URLs under that path only, and pass the keyLocation parameter in each submission pointing to the file's full URL
Send a POST request to https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow with a JSON body containing your host, key, keyLocation, and an array of urlList entries
Verify the submission by checking Bing Webmaster Tools under URL Submission to confirm the URLs were received
Known gotchas
The key file must be served with a 200 HTTP status and UTF-8 encoding; a redirect chain to the key file will cause validation to fail
One key file hosted under a subdirectory path can only authorize URL submissions for URLs that start with that same path prefix; attempting to submit URLs outside the key file's directory scope will be rejected
IndexNow participants share submission data, so a single POST to any participating endpoint (Bing, Yandex, etc.) propagates to all; there is no need to POST separately to each engine
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