IndexNow

How the protocol works technically

The operator generates a key (32-128 hexadecimal characters) and places a text file <key>.txt containing exactly this key in the site root. This proves that the requesting party has control over the site. After that, a simple call is all that is needed for every new or changed URL:

POST https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "host": "example.com",
  "key": "<key>",
  "keyLocation": "https://example.com/<key>.txt",
  "urlList": ["https://example.com/new", "https://example.com/changed"]
}

Bing and the other endpoints accept up to 10,000 URLs per request. In addition, Bing offers its own Webmaster Tools endpoints SubmitUrl (single URL) and SubmitUrlBatch (up to 500 URLs) — using OAuth authentication instead of the classic key file procedure.

Why this is particularly valuable for small sites

Large sites with a high trust score are crawled by Bingbot daily or more often anyway. Small and medium-sized sites often notice that freshly published articles only enter the Bing index after 3-14 days. IndexNow shortens this period to hours. For content creators this is no minor detail: time-critical content (news articles, price changes, seasonal landing pages) otherwise misses its traffic window for two to four times as long.

The main limits — quota and Google

• No Google. Google evaluated the protocol but did not adopt it. For the Google perspective, the Search Console with ”Inspect URL → Request indexing” remains the only active submission option — with a strict daily limit.
• Daily and monthly quota. Bing sets both values individually per verified site. New sites often start with 10-100 URLs per day and grow along with their trust value. Once the quota is exhausted, Bing returns HTTP 400 with the misleading message ”InvalidApiKey” instead of ”QuotaExceeded”.
• No ranking miracle. IndexNow only accelerates the crawl, not the ranking. Content quality, technical SEO and backlinks continue to determine the position.