Set Up IndexNow for Naver and Bing

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Before We Begin 🔗

Once you've built a website, you'll want search engines to discover its pages and show them in search results. Sending an

indexing request

helps search engines learn about new or updated pages quickly. Beyond submitting a sitemap or requesting indexing manually, you can now automate these notifications with

IndexNow

, an open protocol.

Naver has officially supported IndexNow since 2023. This guide uses the official documentation to walk through how the protocol works and how to connect it to Naver.

What Is IndexNow? 🔗

https://www.indexnow.org/ko_kr/↗

IndexNow is an open protocol that uses simple HTTP requests to notify search engines when a page is added, updated, or deleted. It lets you:

Notify search engines about changes promptly.
Report URL changes without waiting for an updated sitemap.xml.
Notify multiple participating search engines with one submission.

Major search engines that support IndexNow include:

How It Works 🔗

The basic flow has three steps.

Generate and verify a key
Create a unique key to prove that you control the website and host the key file at the site root. The key file is plain text, while a batch request uses JSON.
Submit the URL
When you create or update a page, send its URL to the IndexNow API. Use POST for a batch of URLs.
Search engine discovery
A search engine receives the notification and can crawl the URL and update its search results. A notification does not guarantee indexing.

Generate and Upload a Key 🔗

First, create a unique key. Use letters, digits, and hyphens, and make it between 8 and 128 characters long.

You can generate it on the Bing IndexNow setup page↗.

A key might look like abc123.... Create a .txt file named after the key and upload it to your site's root.

abc123....txt

abc123...

Verify that the file is publicly accessible at the corresponding root URL, represented here by https://yourdomain.com/abc123.... Include the .txt extension when using the file created above. You can host it in another directory, though the site root is simpler.

Send an IndexNow Request 🔗

1. GET 🔗

To submit a single URL, send a GET request with the URL in the query string.

https://<searchengine>/indexnow?url=url-changed&key=your-key

For example, to submit https://yourdomain.com/updated-page, send this request.

https://<searchengine>/indexnow?url=https://yourdomain.com/updated-page&key=abc123...

2. POST 🔗

Use POST to submit a batch of URLs. Here is a TypeScript example.

import axios from 'axios'
const INDEXNOW_API = '<searchengine-host-url>'
async function sendToIndexNow(urls: string[], key: string) {
  await axios.post(INDEXNOW_API, {
    host: 'yourdomain.com',
    key,
    keyLocation: `https://yourdomain.com/${key}`,
    urlList: urls
  })
}

Pass the URL list and key to the function to notify the search engine. You can submit up to 10,000 URLs per request, including a mix of HTTP and HTTPS URLs if needed.

Connect to Naver Search Advisor 🔗

Naver officially supports the IndexNow API through Search Advisor↗. Set up a key and submit indexing notifications to Naver.

For other search engine endpoints, see https://www.indexnow.org/ko_kr/faq↗.

1. Submission API Documentation 🔗

Use Naver's submission guide when sending indexing requests. Its POST request format is nearly identical to the IndexNow format.

https://searchadvisor.naver.com/guide/indexnow-request↗

Here is an example.

{
  "host": "yourdomain.com",
  "key": "naver-issued-key",
  "keyLocation": "https://yourdomain.com/naver-issued-key",
  "urlList": [
    "https://yourdomain.com/updated-page"
  ]
}

Troubleshooting Checklist 🔗

Here are some common issues and what to check.

If the key file is inaccessible, check its filename and location.
A 400 or 403 response often points to an invalid request or failed key verification.
You can use the same key for Naver and Bing or configure separate keys.

CORS Issues 🔗

IndexNow endpoints may not allow requests from a browser because of cross-origin restrictions. Send requests from your server to avoid browser CORS errors. Here's an example using Axios on a Node.js server.

import axios from 'axios'
const INDEXNOW_API = '<searchengine-host-url>'
async function sendToIndexNow(urls: string[], key: string) {
	await axios.post(INDEXNOW_API, {
		host: 'yourdomain.com',
		key,
		keyLocation: `https://yourdomain.com/${key}`,
		urlList: urls
	})
}

This keeps the submission on the server, where browser CORS restrictions do not apply.

Send a Request from the Terminal 🔗

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
	"host": "yourdomain.com",
	"key": "naver-issued-key",
	"keyLocation": "https://yourdomain.com/naver-issued-key",
	"urlList": [
		"https://yourdomain.com/updated-page"
	]
}' https://api.searchadvisor.naver.com/indexnow

This is a quick way to test the request. A tool such as Postman works too.

Conclusion 🔗

IndexNow gives search engines a timely signal that a website has changed. Naver's support makes it especially useful to website operators who want their pages discovered in Korea.

Setting up the key and API requests takes a little work. Once that's done, you can send a notification from your publishing workflow with a single call.

Further Considerations 🔗

Connect your update detection logic to IndexNow to automate submissions.
Keep sitemap.xml and use IndexNow alongside it so search engines have multiple ways to discover changed pages.
The original guide noted that Google did not support IndexNow at the time. Watch for changes in search engine support.

References 🔗

Set Up IndexNow for Naver and Bing | PromleeBlog