Technical SEO / Indexing
IndexNow Key & Submission Validator
Confirm your IndexNow key file is reachable and correct, catch batch mistakes before you submit, and get a ready-to-send JSON payload.
The host every URL you submit must share, e.g. example.com or https://example.com
8–128 characters, letters/numbers/dashes only. Generate one and drop it as {key}.txt at your site root if you have not already.
Leave blank to use the default https://yoursite.com/{key}.txt
Paste the pages that changed, were added, or were removed. Fragments (#...) are stripped automatically.
What IndexNow actually checks
IndexNow is a simple push protocol: instead of waiting for a search engine to recrawl your sitemap, you POST the URLs that changed (or were added or removed) to one endpoint, and every participating engine gets notified at once. It does not guarantee faster indexing or ranking — it only tells engines a URL is worth a look sooner. Two things break it silently: a key file that is missing, wrong, or served with the wrong bytes, and a URL batch that mixes hosts, duplicates, or blows past the 10,000-URL cap. This tool checks both against the live protocol rules before you spend a submission on a mistake.
How a submission actually works
First, generate a key (any 8–128 character alnum/dash string) and publish it as a plain-text file at https://yoursite.com/{key}.txt — that file is how an engine proves you control the site. Then POST a JSON body of {host, key, keyList/urlList} to https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow (or ping a single URL with a GET request). Every URL in that body must belong to the exact host you named — a request that mixes example.com and www.example.com is invalid, not merged.
Limits worth knowing
Max 10,000 URLs per request (batch bigger lists). Key must be 8–128 chars of [A-Za-z0-9-]. The key file must return HTTP 200 with the key as the entire body (whitespace aside) — no HTML wrapper, no extra text. Submitting a URL does not force a crawl or a ranking boost; it only raises priority in the discovery queue.
Frequently asked questions
Does IndexNow replace submitting a sitemap?
No. Sitemaps still tell engines everything you have; IndexNow tells them what just changed, so they do not have to wait for the next crawl to notice. Keep both.
Does IndexNow submission guarantee faster indexing?
No guarantee — it is a hint, not a command. Participating engines still apply their normal crawl budget and quality checks; IndexNow only shortens the time before they look.
Can I use one key for multiple subdomains?
Only if the same key file is hosted at the root of each subdomain (or reachable via a custom keyLocation on that exact host) — the host in the payload must match every URL in it.
Which search engines actually use IndexNow?
Microsoft Bing and Yandex operate the shared API; Naver, Seznam.cz and Cloudflare's automatic crawler relay also consume it. Google does not currently participate.
What happens if I submit more than 10,000 URLs?
A single request over the cap is rejected by the API. Split the list into multiple requests — this tool does that automatically and gives you one payload per batch.