How to Submit URLs to IndexNow for Instant Bing Indexing

October 19, 2026 · 5 min read · By the DollarWise team

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You publish a new page. Then you wait. And wait. Days pass before Bing bothers to crawl it, and every day it sits unindexed is a day it cannot rank or send you traffic. There is a better way: IndexNow, an open protocol that lets your site notify search engines the moment a URL is created, updated, or deleted — so indexing happens in minutes, not days.

This guide explains how IndexNow works, how to get a key, and how to start submitting URLs today.

What IndexNow is (and isn’t)

IndexNow is a simple push protocol launched in 2021 by Microsoft Bing and Yandex. Instead of search engines guessing when your content changed (by recrawling on a schedule), your site proactively pings them: “this URL is new,” “this URL was updated,” or “this URL was deleted.”

Two important facts:

Bing and Yandex participate. Google does not use IndexNow (it has its own indexing API for job postings and livestreams only), so IndexNow is a Bing/Yandex play — and Bing still drives a meaningful share of global search, plus it powers DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and other engines.
It complements, not replaces, sitemaps. Sitemaps give crawlers the full map of your site. IndexNow is the real-time alarm bell for changes. You want both.

How the protocol works

IndexNow needs three things:

A key. A randomly generated string that proves you control the domain.
A key file hosted at your domain root. A text file named <your-key>.txt containing the key. Bing checks it before accepting your pings.
A ping endpoint. An HTTPS GET or POST request to https://www.bing.com/indexnow (or https://yandex.com/indexnow) with your host, key, key location, and the list of URLs.

A minimal GET request looks like this:

https://www.bing.com/indexnow?host=example.com&key=abc123...&keyLocation=https://example.com/abc123....txt&urlList=https://example.com/new-page/

You can submit up to 10,000 URLs per request, and there is no submission quota for verified sites beyond reasonable use. Response code 200 means accepted; 202 means accepted but your key will be checked; 400/403/422 mean malformed request, invalid key, or unresolvable URLs.

Setting up your IndexNow key

Generating and hosting the key takes about two minutes:

Generate a key. Use a random string (UUID-style). Our free IndexNow submitter tool generates a key for you and formats the submission requests automatically.
Create the key file. Save a text file named <key>.txt at your domain root containing only the key. It must be reachable over HTTPS, e.g. https://yoursite.com/4a9bf262d7be7ca73c1187827aed46cd.txt.
Verify it loads. Open the URL in a browser — you should see just the key. If it 404s, the key check will fail and your pings will be rejected.
Submit your URLs. Fire pings whenever content is created, updated, or deleted.

Best practices for IndexNow submissions

Submitting correctly matters. Search engines reward good citizens and ignore noisy ones.

Submit only changed URLs. Ping when a page is published, meaningfully updated, or deleted — not on every save or every crawl of your sitemap.
Submit the canonical URL. If a page has query parameters, UTM tags, or session IDs, submit the clean canonical version.
One host per key. The host in your request must match the key file’s domain. Subdomains need their own keys unless you verify at the domain level.
Automate it. Wire the ping into your publishing flow. Static site generators can hook into the build (for example, a post-build script that collects changed files and posts them), and CMS platforms like WordPress have IndexNow plugins. If you run Hugo like this site, a small Python script that reads a queue of new URLs and submits them after each deploy works well.
Deleted pages count too. IndexNow accepts deleted URLs — use it to get 404s/gone pages out of the index faster instead of leaving stale results in search.

What to expect after submitting

Typical timelines after a successful ping:

Minutes to a few hours for Bing to fetch and index a new URL — versus days or weeks through the normal crawl queue, especially for new or low-traffic sites.
Faster re-indexing of updated pages, which matters for time-sensitive content like price pages, job listings, or breaking news.
Cleaner removal of deleted URLs from results.

You can monitor results in Bing Webmaster Tools under URL Inspection — submit a URL via IndexNow, then check its index status there. If it is not picked up within 24 hours, double-check your key file is reachable and your URLs return 200 (not blocked by robots.txt or login walls).

IndexNow vs. sitemaps vs. the Google Indexing API

A quick comparison so you use each tool where it shines:

Method	Engines	Speed	Cost
IndexNow	Bing, Yandex	Minutes–hours	Free
XML sitemap	All	Days–weeks (crawl-dependent)	Free
Google Indexing API	Google only, jobs/livestreams	Minutes	Free (limited scope)

For a typical blog or content site, the winning combo is: keep your XML sitemap healthy for everyone, use IndexNow for Bing/Yandex, and accept Google’s normal crawl for everything outside its narrow Indexing API scope.

Frequently asked questions

What is IndexNow and which search engines support it?

IndexNow is an open protocol that lets websites ping search engines the instant a URL is created, updated, or deleted. Bing and Yandex support it; Google has not adopted it.

Is IndexNow free to use?

Yes. Submitting URLs through IndexNow costs nothing. You only need a key file hosted on your domain to prove ownership of the URLs you submit.

How fast does Bing index URLs submitted through IndexNow?

Usually within minutes to a few hours, compared to the days or weeks a normal crawl queue can take for low-traffic pages.

Do I still need a sitemap if I use IndexNow?

Yes. Sitemaps remain the discovery backbone for crawlers, while IndexNow is a real-time notification layer. Use both: sitemaps for structure, IndexNow for speed.

#indexnow #bing #indexing #seo

Written by the DollarWise team

We turn confusing money topics into plain-English guides for beginners. Every article is written to be actionable on day one — no jargon, no hype, no sales pitch.