IndexNow Instant Indexing & Discovery Audit

Audit whether a website provides real-time, push-based indexation and discovery capabilities to search engines and AI answer engines via the IndexNow protocol [INDEXNOW-SPEC-01], moving beyond passive pull-based sitemap polling.

Workflow

1. Verify IndexNow Verification Key Hosting:
   • IndexNow defines exactly two key-hosting mechanisms [INDEXNOW-SPEC-01]. There is no site-hosted JSON manifest and no key HTTP header — do not probe for either.
     • A UTF-8 text file named {key}.txt at the host root: https://example.com/{key}.txt.
     • A key file at any other path on the same host, declared per-submission via the keyLocation field.
   • Verify the key file returns HTTP 200 with Content-Type: text/plain and a body that is exactly the key string (no HTML wrapper, no trailing markup).
   • Verify the key is 8-128 characters and contains only a-z, A-Z, 0-9, or - [INDEXNOW-SPEC-01].