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Check that your IndexNow key file is valid

Fetch your key file the way a search engine does and see exactly why verification would fail: wrong status, off-host redirect, HTML instead of text, or a key that does not match.

This check runs on our server because the key file has to be fetched from the public internet, exactly as a search engine would. Only that URL is requested, and nothing is stored.

Key file check

Enter the host you submit URLs for and the key you plan to use. The default file location is derived automatically.

The hostname your submitted URLs live on. Do not include a path.

8–128 characters, using letters, digits and dashes.

Only needed when the file is not at https://host/key.txt. It must still be on the same host.

When to use this tool

A 403 from IndexNow almost always means the engine could not read your key file the way you assume it can. This check reproduces that fetch from outside your network.

  • Before your first submission

    Confirm the file is live before you spend a batch finding out that it is not.

  • After a deploy or migration

    Static files are easy to lose when routing, hosting, or CDN rules change.

  • When Bing answers 403 or 422

    Both codes usually trace back to the key file or a host mismatch rather than to the URL list itself.

  • When it loads for you but not for a crawler

    Auth, WAF rules and geo-blocking make a file that opens fine in your browser invisible from the outside.

How to run the check

The request is made server-side with redirects followed, so you see the same thing the search engine's fetcher would see.

  1. 1

    Enter the host

    Use the hostname your URLs live on, without a scheme or path — for example www.example.com.

  2. 2

    Enter the key

    The same key string you will pass in the submission. If the file sits at a non-default path, add it as the key file URL.

  3. 3

    Run the check

    The server fetches the file, follows redirects, and reports the final URL, status, content type and body.

  4. 4

    Fix anything reported

    Each issue lists the change that resolves it. Re-run until the result is clean, then submit your batch.

What usually goes wrong

Cached CDN responses

A CDN can keep serving an old 404 after you upload the file. Purge that path, then re-check.

Trailing whitespace or a BOM

A UTF-8 byte-order mark makes the body differ from the key even when the two look identical on screen.

www or HTTPS redirects

A redirect that changes the hostname breaks verification even when it lands on a perfectly valid file.

Bot protection

Challenge pages return 200 with HTML. To a search engine that is a failed verification, not a security feature.

Frequently asked questions

Why can this not run in my browser?
A browser cannot read a cross-origin response without a CORS header, and key files are served as plain static text. The fetch has to happen server-side.
Do you store the key I check?
No. The key is used to build the request and compare the response, then discarded. Nothing is written to disk.
The check passes but Bing still returns 403.
Confirm the key in the submission matches exactly, and that the host you declare is the same host as every URL in the batch.
Can I check a key file on a staging domain?
Yes, as long as the domain is publicly reachable. A file behind a VPN or basic auth cannot be verified by a search engine either.
What does a 202 response from IndexNow mean?
The batch was accepted but the key has not been validated yet. Running this check tells you now whether that validation will pass.
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