Developer loses two weeks to silent IndexNow failures caused by a missing keyLocation field
A developer running a static site on GitHub Pages spent two weeks submitting URLs via IndexNow, receiving 202 success responses each time, yet the site remained unindexed on Bing. The root cause was a missing keyLocation field in the API payload: IndexNow verifies ownership by fetching a key file from the domain root, but GitHub Pages project sites host files under a subpath, causing the verification fetch to return a 404 and Bing to silently reject submissions. Yandex compounded the confusion by returning 202 with a success message even for unauthorized requests, masking the underlying error. Bing, by contrast, returns a clear 403 with an error message when the key cannot be verified, a response the developer missed by only checking HTTP status codes. The fix is straightforward: include the keyLocation field pointing to the actual key file path, and verify the key URL resolves correctly before making any submissions.
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