Integrate IndexNow using ASP.NET Core

Published Oct 14, 2025

Although Google remains the dominant search engine, it is not the only path to traffic. For new websites, achieving high Google rankings can take months or even years because Google often crawls cautiously and prioritizes established authority. In my experience, many of my newer sites get more traffic from Bing than from Google in the early months.

One of Bing’s newer tools that works in your favor is IndexNow — a protocol that lets you proactively notify participating search engines when pages are created, updated, or deleted. By submitting your pages yourself, you cut out the waiting period for bots to discover changes. In this article, I’ll explain what IndexNow is (and who supports it), weigh pros and cons, and show how to build an ASP.NET Core service to integrate it properly (including when to send updates for deletes).

What is IndexNow, and who supports it?

The concept: push-based indexing

Traditionally, search engines “pull” information from websites — bots crawl periodically, discover new or changed pages, and then index them. This crawling cycle introduces latency between when you publish content and when it appears in a search engine’s index.

IndexNow flips that model: it is a push protocol. You tell the search engine directly, via an API call (a “ping”), which URLs have changed. That nudges the search engine to crawl and re-index those URLs sooner. Once the engine receives the ping, it also shares the notification with other search engines that support the protocol, so you don’t need to notify each one individually.

Search engines and platforms using IndexNow

IndexNow was launched by Microsoft Bing and Yandex (the Russian search engine) in October 2021.
Later, other search engines (such as Seznam, Naver, and others) also adopted or pledged support.
Many content platforms, CDNs, and SEO tools have built-in or plugin support for IndexNow. For example:
- WordPress plugins (e.g. via All-in-One SEO) handle automatic submission of changed URLs and host the key.
- Services like Cloudflare support IndexNow via Crawler Hints.
- Wix publicly announced the adoption of IndexNow.
- Ahrefs also provides IndexNow submission capabilities — and I personally use Ahrefs to submit my pages to IndexNow, which makes it easier to handle multiple websites from one place.
- Bing’s own Webmaster Tools site describes integration and encourages use.
- Some shopping/product sites are using IndexNow to accelerate updates in product feeds and shopping surfaces.

Because of the cross-sharing behavior, when you ping Bing, Bing can forward your URL to Yandex (and other IndexNow partners) automatically. This means fewer distinct submissions from your side.

How IndexNow affects site visibility

Faster indexing: The primary benefit is that new or updated pages are picked up more quickly — often in minutes or hours instead of days or weeks.
Reduced crawl load/crawl efficiency: Because search engines don’t need to wander randomly across your site looking for changes, they can allocate crawling resources more intelligently. This can reduce unnecessary server hits.
Better freshness signals: Search engines can treat pages that are actively signaled as more “alive” and up-to-date, which can enhance how your content is perceived in freshness-sensitive queries (news, updates, time-sensitive content).
No guarantee of ranking: It’s important to understand that indexing is one step in the process. Faster indexing does not guarantee that a page will rank better — you still need quality content, backlinks, internal linking, etc.

In practice, for new sites, IndexNow gives you a slight edge by cutting down “indexing lag,” which is often a major hurdle in early SEO growth.

Pros and Cons of using IndexNow

✅ Pros

Speed: As noted, pages get indexed faster. This is especially beneficial for timely content (news, product updates, tutorials).
Efficiency / Server Resource Saving: Less need for broad bot crawling reduces unnecessary load on your server.
Push into multiple search engines via a single notification: Because participating engines share the URLs, you don’t need to write custom code for each engine.
Simple protocol / easy integration: The API itself is lightweight — you make HTTP requests with parameters like url and key.
Improved freshness: Your site signals activeness, which can help in domains where freshness is valued (e.g. product listings, news).
Alignment with SEO best practices: It becomes part of a proactive SEO toolset (along with sitemaps, internal linking, etc.).

❌ Cons / Limitations

Lack of Google support (as of now)
Google has not officially adopted IndexNow. While there are rumors or tests, IndexNow will not directly speed up indexing on Google currently.
Does not guarantee instant indexing or ranking
Even with submission, search engines still must crawl, analyze, and decide whether to index. Some pages may take longer.
Submission quotas and limits
There are restrictions on how many URLs you can submit at once (often up to 10,000) and daily quotas in the IndexNow protocol specs.
Extra layer of process / maintenance
You need to implement logic to detect changes, queue submissions, track failures, retries, etc. That is extra overhead beyond your standard CMS or content workflow.
Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) does not allow manual URL submission from within the interface if you choose IndexNow
In BWT, there is a “URL Submission” section, but it is primarily tied to the IndexNow or URL submission API, not a human-in-the-dashboard bulk submit tool. The dashboard encourages use of IndexNow.
This means you rely on your custom integration or third-party tools (e.g. Ahrefs, SEO suites) for submission rather than having a “submit URL now” button in BWT itself.
Potential misuse and duplicate submissions
If your automation is aggressive or erroneous, you might submit many URLs repeatedly, which can look spammy or waste your quota.

In summary: the benefits generally outweigh the downsides, especially for sites that publish frequently and benefit from timely discovery. But you still need to design your integration thoughtfully.

Basic process of integrating IndexNow

Here’s a high-level workflow to follow:

Generate an API key
Use the official IndexNow key generator (or generate your own GUID-like string).
Host the API key file in your root directory
Create a .txt file named exactly as the key (e.g. your-key-value.txt) containing the key as its content, and serve it at https://yourdomain.com/your-key.txt. This verifies domain ownership.
Develop or configure change-detection logic
In your CMS or site engine, capture events when pages are created, updated, or deleted.
Trigger an HTTP request (ping) to the IndexNow endpoint
E.g.:
```
GET https://www.bing.com/indexnow?url=https://yourdomain.com/changed-page&key=your-key-value
```
Or POST (depending on specification) with a JSON payload of multiple URLs.
Handle responses, errors, and retries
Check HTTP response codes and body to confirm success or failure, retry if necessary (within quotas).
Optionally batch multiple URLs
For high-traffic sites, you may want to accumulate a batch of changed URLs and submit them in one request (up to the protocol’s limit).
Maintain logs / status tracking
Log submissions, timestamps, errors, and success status. Useful for debugging and for future audits.
Fallback / residual crawling
Continue using sitemap submissions (to Bing & Google) and internal linking so that pages not covered by pushes are still discoverable. IndexNow doesn’t replace traditional indexing entirely.

Because you’re building this in ASP.NET Core, it makes sense to wrap that logic in a reusable Service class and possibly background jobs / queued tasks.

Implementing an IndexNow service in ASP.NET Core

Why you must submit on page updates and deletions

Updates/additions: To tell search engines that content has changed (new text, images, metadata) or new pages exist.
Deletions: To alert search engines that URLs are removed so they don’t continue indexing dead pages. Without deletion signals, search engines might continue crawling them or keep obsolete links in their index.
Search engines must act on both sides to keep their index in sync. IndexNow is designed to support delete notifications.

Failing to notify deletions can lead to “404 noise” in the index, which is undesirable for SEO hygiene.

Sample service implementation

Here is a basic conceptual service. This is simplified for clarity; you’ll want to add error handling, retries, logging, and possibly batching.

public interface IIndexNowService
{
    Task SubmitUrlAsync(string url, CancellationToken ct = default);
    Task SubmitUrlsAsync(IEnumerable<string> urls, CancellationToken ct = default);
}

public class IndexNowService : IIndexNowService
{
    private readonly HttpClient _httpClient;
    private readonly string _apiKey;

    /// <summary>
    /// The maximum number of URLs allowed per request. Default in protocol is often 10,000.
    /// </summary>
    private const int MaxUrlsPerRequest = 10000;

    public IndexNowService(HttpClient httpClient, IConfiguration config)
    {
        _httpClient = httpClient;
        _apiKey = config["IndexNow:ApiKey"];
        if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(_apiKey))
            throw new InvalidOperationException("IndexNow API key is not configured.");
    }

    public async Task SubmitUrlAsync(string url, CancellationToken ct = default)
    {
        var encoded = Uri.EscapeDataString(url);
        var endpoint = $"https://www.bing.com/indexnow?url={encoded}&key={_apiKey}";
        var resp = await _httpClient.GetAsync(endpoint, ct);
        // Optionally inspect response status and body
        resp.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
    }

    public async Task SubmitUrlsAsync(IEnumerable<string> urls, CancellationToken ct = default)
    {
        // Partition into chunks if over limit
        var batches = urls
            .Select((u, idx) => new { u, idx })
            .GroupBy(x => x.idx / MaxUrlsPerRequest)
            .Select(g => g.Select(x => x.u));

        foreach (var batch in batches)
        {
            var payload = new
            {
                host = "",  // optional, depending on spec
                key = _apiKey,
                urlList = batch.ToList()
            };

            var endpoint = "https://www.bing.com/indexnow";
            var content = new StringContent(
                JsonSerializer.Serialize(payload),
                Encoding.UTF8,
                "application/json");

            var resp = await _httpClient.PostAsync(endpoint, content, ct);
            resp.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
        }
    }
}

You’d register this in Program.cs (or Startup):

builder.Services.AddHttpClient<IIndexNowService, IndexNowService>();

Then, in your content logic (e.g. in your CMS controller, repository, or domain layer), after you successfully persist content changes or deletions, you call:

public class ArticlePublisher
{
    private readonly IIndexNowService _indexNow;

    public ArticlePublisher(IIndexNowService indexNow)
    {
        _indexNow = indexNow;
    }

    public async Task PublishAsync(Article article, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        // Save article to the database or CMS
        var url = $"https://www.example.com/blog/{article.Slug}";

        // Notify IndexNow of the new or updated article
        await _indexNow.SubmitUrlAsync(url, ct);
    }

    public async Task DeleteAsync(Article article, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        // Notify IndexNow that this article has been deleted
        var url = $"https://www.example.com/blog/{article.Slug}";
        await _indexNow.SubmitUrlAsync(url, ct);
    }
}

Add IndexNow key in appsettings.json

To make the service work, you need to store your IndexNow key in the configuration file so that it can be read by the service using config["IndexNow:ApiKey"].

Add a section like this in your appsettings.json:

{
  "IndexNow": {
    "ApiKey": "YOUR-INDEXNOW-KEY"
  }
}

You can generate your key from the official IndexNow site.

Place the same key value inside a .txt file named after the key (e.g., YOUR-INDEXNOW-KEY.txt) in your site’s root folder — this allows Bing and others to verify domain ownership.

Keeping the key in appsettings.json lets your ASP.NET Core code securely access it without hardcoding it into the service class.

Summary & closing thoughts

IndexNow is a powerful tool that gives site owners more control over how quickly search engines discover content changes. Especially for newer websites, the ability to accelerate indexing on Bing (and other partners) can reduce the “waiting period” for visibility.

By building a clean, resilient service in ASP.NET Core, you can integrate IndexNow into your content pipeline — notifying search engines about additions, updates, and deletions in real time. Just remember:

Don’t treat IndexNow as a replacement for sitemaps or internal linking — use them together.
Handle errors, quotas, retries, and batching gracefully.
Submissions do not guarantee ranking or instant indexing — they are an indexer signal, not magic.

If you like, I can also generate a downloadable NuGet-ready implementation or a sample GitHub project. Would you like me to include that or integrate code more tightly with ASP.NET Core’s dependency injection / hosted services pattern?