IndexNow

IndexNow lets you instantly notify search engines (Bing, Yandex, and others) when pages are added or updated. Instead of waiting days for crawlers to find changes, they’re indexed within hours.

How it works

You generate a secret key
You place a verification file at https://domain.com/<key>.txt
After deploying, you POST your updated URLs to api.indexnow.org along with the key
All participating search engines receive the submission simultaneously

Setup (already done in the Juju Alpha template)

1. Key file

A file named <key>.txt lives in public/ and contains just the key:

205d1dc34cbc4ab0d6410fb0d5b96745

Accessible at: https://domain.com/205d1dc34cbc4ab0d6410fb0d5b96745.txt

2. Meta tag in layout

<meta name="indexnow-key" content="205d1dc34cbc4ab0d6410fb0d5b96745" />

3. Submit script (`scripts/indexnow.mjs`)

Reads the sitemap, filters out noindex pages, and POSTs all URLs to IndexNow:

npm run indexnow

For a new client site

Generate a new key (don’t reuse the Juju Alpha key):

node -e "const c='abcdef0123456789';let k='';for(let i=0;i<32;i++)k+=c[Math.floor(Math.random()*c.length)];console.log(k)"

Then:

Create public/<new-key>.txt with the key as content
Update the meta name="indexnow-key" in Layout.astro
Update KEY and KEY_LOCATION in scripts/indexnow.mjs
Update HOST and SITEMAP_URL in scripts/indexnow.mjs

When to run it

Run npm run indexnow after every deploy that changes public content:

New blog post published
Service page updated
New page added
Pricing changed

No need to run it for checkout/payment-return/thank-you page changes - those are noindex and filtered out by the script.

API response codes

Code	Meaning
200	OK - URLs accepted
202	Accepted - queued for processing
400	Bad request - check URL format
403	Forbidden - key mismatch
422	Unprocessable - invalid URLs
429	Too many requests - slow down