IndexNow Key Checker

Paste your domain and IndexNow key. We fetch the key file the way a search engine does and tell you exactly what is wrong — free, no account.

Why a 202 does not mean your key works

This is the single most misleading thing about IndexNow. The global endpoint, Bing and Yandex answer 202 Accepted to any request with a syntactically valid key — including a key that was never published anywhere. They check the key file later, and if that check fails the submission is discarded with no further notification.

So a submission tool that shows a green tick for a 202 is telling you nothing. Naver, Seznam, Yep and Amazon validate during the request and return 403 instead, which is why the same key can appear to work on some engines and fail on others.

What each result means

Result What it means and how to fix it
verifiedThe file is reachable and contains your key. Submissions for this host will be honoured.
not_found404 or 410. The file is not published, or not at that path. Upload a text file containing only the key.
mismatchThe file exists but its contents are not your key — often an HTML 404 page returned with a 200 status, or the wrong key left over from a previous setup.
bad_statusA non-200 response such as 401, 403 or 500. The file must be publicly readable, with no auth and no redirect to a login page.
unreachableDNS failure, TLS error or timeout. Check the host resolves publicly and the certificate is valid.

Publishing the key file correctly

1. Pick a key. 8–128 characters, letters, numbers and dashes only. Generate one here if you do not have one.

2. Create the file. Name it {your-key}.txt and put the key inside as the only content. No quotes, no JSON, no surrounding markup.

3. Serve it from the host root. https://example.com/{your-key}.txt. It must be the same host as the URLs you submit — www. counts as different.

4. Check it here. Then submit your URLs.

Frequently asked questions

Why does IndexNow return 403 for my key?
A 403 means the engine fetched your key file and could not accept it. Almost always one of: the file is not at the URL the engine expects, the server returns a redirect or an HTML error page instead of the file, the file contains something other than the exact key (a trailing newline is fine, extra text is not), or the URL is behind authentication, a firewall, or a country block. Naver, Seznam, Yep and Amazon check during the request, so they surface this immediately. Bing and Yandex do not.

I got 202 Accepted. Does that mean it worked?
No. The global endpoint, Bing and Yandex return 202 for any syntactically valid key, including one that was never published. They validate the key file afterwards and silently discard the submission if that check fails. A 202 confirms your request was well-formed, nothing more. That is precisely the gap this checker closes.

Where exactly does the key file go?
By default at the root of your host: https://example.com/{your-key}.txt, containing only the key. If you cannot write to the root, you may host it elsewhere on the same host and pass that location as keyLocation when submitting — but the file must still be on the same host as the URLs you are submitting.

Does www.example.com work for a key hosted on example.com?
No. Search engines treat them as different hosts. The key file must be on exactly the host whose URLs you submit, and every URL in a submission must belong to that same host. Mixing them returns 422.

Does the key file have to be text/plain?
The specification asks for text/plain. In practice most engines tolerate other content types as long as the body is the key, but serving it correctly removes one variable. This checker warns when the content type is something else rather than failing you for it.

Can the key file redirect?
It is risky. Some engines do not follow redirects when fetching the key, so a file that resolves for you via a redirect may fail for them. This checker follows redirects but warns when one occurred, because that is a common cause of a submission that looks fine and never lands.

Key verified? Submit your URLs

Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam, Yep and Amazon — free, no account.

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