IndexNow setup

IndexNow is a protocol that lets you ping search engines the moment you publish or update a URL. Bing, Yandex, Naver and Seznam all support it. Google doesn't – for Google you still rely on the regular crawl and sitemap submission. But for everything else, IndexNow can shrink time-to-index from days to seconds.

How it works

You host a small text file at your domain root containing a secret key. Then you POST URLs to the IndexNow endpoint and include your key. The receiving search engine verifies your key matches what's in the file, then queues the URL for immediate crawl.

Set it up in SEMOptimiser

1. Go to Console → IndexNow → Setup.
2. Click Generate key. We create a unique 32-character key for your domain.
3. Download the key file we generate (it's the key followed by .txt).
4. Upload that file to your domain root, so it's reachable at https://yourdomain.com/abc123.txt.
5. Click Verify. We fetch the file to confirm it's in place.
6. Done. You can now submit URLs through the SEMOptimiser UI, the API, or any IndexNow-compatible CMS plugin.

Submit URLs from the dashboard

Go to Console → IndexNow → Submit. Paste up to 10,000 URLs at a time (one per line) and click Submit. We forward them to all four supported engines in parallel and show you the response from each.

Automate via webhook from your CMS

The real value is auto-submitting URLs the moment you publish. Most CMS platforms have a webhook on post-publish:

• WordPress: install our WordPress plugin (covered separately) – it auto-pings IndexNow on publish.
• Shopify: install our Shopify app – same behaviour.
• Headless setups: POST to our API on publish (see code below).

bash
curl -X POST https://api.semoptimiser.com/v1/indexnow \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "urls": ["https://yoursite.com/new-post"] }'

Daily limits

IndexNow itself has no hard limit, but each engine throttles individually. Practical daily ceilings:

Tracking submission results

Console → IndexNow → History shows every submitted URL, when it was submitted, and the engine response. For URLs you care about, you can also queue a Bulk URL inspection to see whether Bing has actually indexed them yet (typically within 24 hours).