What I learned after 15 days of SEO: How I got my site indexed by ChatGPT, Bing, and other AI search tools — and how you can too
Get found by AI with IndexNow
Most sites aren’t visible in AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Copilot.
Here’s how I fixed that for my startup (and how you can too).
Why This Matters
All signs indicate that AI search will surpass Google search in roughly two years. It’s catching on fast, so starting to care now can give you a small but meaningful edge over your competitors — especially since, as you’ll see, it requires relatively low effort for potentially high ROI.
First, ChatGPT is about 50% owned by Microsoft. So it’s no surprise that ChatGPT uses Bing exclusively to search and browse online. This means if your website is well indexed by Google but not by Bing, you’re missing out on a lot of potential visibility in AI search tools such as:
- ChatGPT
- Perplexity
- Copilot
- Any AI tool that taps into Bing’s data
How to Fix It in 2 Simple Steps
1. Submit Your Site to Bing Webmaster Tools
- Go to bing.com/webmasters, Bing’s version of Google Search Console.
- You can even import your existing site from Google Search Console with one click.
This step officially links your site to Bing. Done.
2. Submit Your Sitemap
- Once set up, simply submit your sitemap (
sitemap.xml). This tells Bing to start indexing all your pages.
And voilà, you’re now visible to Bing, which means ChatGPT and other AI search tools can access your content. Your site can now potentially reach hundreds of millions of users.
BONUS: Automate Instant Indexing with IndexNow
In a perfect world, every time you publish a new page or update your site, it would get indexed instantly.
- With Google, you have to manually request it.
- With Bing, you can automate it using the IndexNow protocol.
IndexNow is an official standard, so there’s no downside or risk of being flagged as spam.
You’re simply letting Bing know: “Hey, I added this page.”
IndexNow is supported by:
- Bing
- Yandex (mainly in Russia)
- Naver (mainly in South Korea)
How to Set It Up
Option 1: Use a Platform
If you’re using Webflow, Shopify, or similar platforms, they support IndexNow either natively or via plugins.
Option 2: Use Ahrefs
Ahrefs supports IndexNow through their Boost upgrade (~$20/month extra).
Option 3: Automate It with Code (What I Did)
For AIThumbnail.so, I automated the entire process using GitHub Actions. Here's how:
- Generate your IndexNow API key here.
- Use the bojieyan GitHub Action to run daily:
- Every day at 2am, it checks my
sitemap.xmlfor pages with a recent<lastmod>tag. - If a page was updated in the last 24 hours, it submits it via the IndexNow API.
- Every day at 2am, it checks my
That’s it. Now every new or updated page is immediately pushed to Bing — no manual work, no delay.
Startup is just a numbers game
If this helped, give me a few claps and follow me. I’ll share more real lessons from building and growing my startup week by week.
Thanks for reading!
This is incredibly timely and insightful — I’ve been trying to understand how AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity pull data, and your breakdown made the process much clearer. The connection between Bing indexing and visibility across these AI tools is something I hadn’t fully appreciated before.
The GitHub Actions approach to automate IndexNow submissions is a clever touch — it’s great to see a no-fluff, practical example of how startups can leverage automation without expensive tools. Definitely bookmarking this to implement for my own projects.
Thanks for sharing the process transparently. Would love to hear in a future post if you notice any measurable SEO or traffic improvements from AI-driven search in the coming months!