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WP Visibility

Everyday SEO

Turn On IndexNow and Check a Submission

Switch on the IndexNow module and publishing or updating an indexable post tells Bing and the other participating engines which URL changed. Google does not take part, and a submission is not indexing.

Updated September 27, 2026

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Open WP Visibility → Settings → Modules and turn on IndexNow. There is nothing else to configure. From then on, when a post is published, updated while published, or taken out of publication, WP Visibility sends the post’s current URL to the shared IndexNow endpoint, which passes it to the participating search engines. Google is not one of them.

What it does

IndexNow is a protocol for telling search engines that a URL has changed. One submission to api.indexnow.org is shared among the participating engines, which include Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep (IndexNow FAQ, checked September 27, 2026). Each engine decides for itself whether to crawl the URL, and a submission does not guarantee indexing.

WP Visibility submits:

  • when a post goes to published, including the first publish;
  • when a published post is updated;
  • when a published post is unpublished or trashed. For a post moved to draft, pending review or the trash, WordPress has already switched it to its plain address (such as ?p=123), so that address is sent rather than the public one the engine knew. Do not rely on this to get the old address dropped.

It does not submit:

  • saves of a draft or other post that was not published, autosaves and revisions;
  • post types that are not public;
  • password-protected posts;
  • anything set to noindex, one post or a whole post type;
  • category, tag and archive pages.

The request is sent after the post has finished saving, and WP Visibility does not wait for the endpoint’s answer.

The key file

IndexNow asks every site to prove it owns the URLs it submits with a key published on the site itself (IndexNow documentation, checked September 27, 2026). WP Visibility creates a random 32-character key the first time it submits and serves it at:

https://your-site.com/<the-key>.txt

The file is virtual; nothing is written to disk. Before the first submission there is no key yet, and that address does not exist.

Check that it is working

WP Visibility has no screen that lists submissions, and a submission made while you save leaves no notice. To confirm the module is working:

  1. Publish or update a post that is indexable and not password-protected.
  2. Open Bing Webmaster Tools for the site and look at its IndexNow report, which lists the latest 1,000 submitted URLs with their index status (Bing Webmaster Blog, checked September 27, 2026). Verification first: Verify Your Site with Search Console and Bing.

If a URL does not appear after a day, check the post is published, public and not noindexed, and that nothing in front of the site (a firewall rule, a maintenance mode plugin) blocks the key file for outside requests.

With the Assistant connection module on, a connected assistant whose WordPress user has the manage_options capability (administrators do) can also submit up to 100 URLs from this site in one go through the “Submit URLs to IndexNow” ability. That call waits for the answer and reports an error if the endpoint refuses it.

Things to know

  • Staging sites submit too. In this release a site set to discourage search engines still sends IndexNow submissions. Keep the module off on staging and development copies.
  • It does not replace the sitemap. Keep the sitemap submitted in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools; IndexNow only speeds up notice of changes. Submit Your Sitemap.
  • Only the changed post is sent. An archive page that lists it is not.
  • Developers can change or empty the URL list before sending with the wpvis_indexnow_urls filter.

Behavior checked against WP Visibility 2.10.3.