IndexNow key checker: is the file really served?

The four answers

Everything that can happen falls into one of these.

• The file came back as plain text

  Your side is correct. Verification will read what you published, and if submissions are still failing the cause is elsewhere.

• A redirect came back

  The request never reached the file. This is the most common cause that looks like a missing file: a rule canonicalising the domain or normalising paths catches the key file along with everything else, and a browser hides it by following along.

• A page came back

  Something answered, and it was a document rather than the file. A framework serving its shell for unmatched paths or a decorated error page both produce this, and both look perfectly healthy to a person.

• Nothing came back

  Either the file is genuinely absent, or something in front of the site refused the request. Access controls and rules aimed at unfamiliar automated clients apply to the fetching engine exactly as they apply to anything else.

Each of those maps to a section of key not found, which covers what to do next.

Why the browser is not this check

Two habits make the browser the wrong instrument here.

It follows redirects silently, so the second answer above looks like the first. And it renders what it receives, so the third looks like a page loading normally rather than like a key file that is missing. Both of those are helpful behaviour when browsing and unhelpful when the question is exactly what a server returns.

This check makes the request the way verification makes it, which is the only version of the answer that predicts what an engine will see.

What it does not tell you

It reports on the key file and nothing else.

A correct key file does not mean a submission succeeded, and a successful submission does not mean a page was indexed. Those are separate steps with separate outcomes, and the last of them is the engine's decision rather than anything observable from here, as set out on how it works.

If the file is served by the layer delivering your traffic rather than placed by hand, most of the failures above stop being possible, which is what submitting from the edge describes.

FAQ