URL Monitor vs. IndexerNow: monitoring index status and acting on it
URL Monitor's centre of gravity is watching: bulk-index new pages, then track their status in Google and flag URLs with problems. That monitoring emphasis is genuinely useful, and it's the half of the job most submission tools treat as an afterthought. IndexerNow covers the same ground from the other direction — it's a submission tool that reads Google's URL Inspection API back for every URL, then audits the page when Google's answer isn't the one you wanted.
| URL Monitor | IndexerNow | |
|---|---|---|
| Connect your own Google Search Console | Yes | Yes |
| Uses Google's official Indexing API | Yes | Yes |
| Bulk index status tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Flags URLs with indexing problems | Yes | Yes |
| Explains why a specific page won't index | Not advertised | Indexability audit with the fix |
| Push to Bing / IndexNow too | Not advertised | Yes |
| Scheduled auto-push from sitemap or RSS | Not advertised | Yes |
| Same balance pays for checks, audits & AI citation checks | Not advertised | Yes |
| AI-crawler tracking (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) | Not advertised | Yes |
| Free daily allowance | Not advertised | 2 credits / day, spend on anything |
Frequently asked
Is monitoring index status worth paying for separately?
Monitoring only pays off if you act on what it finds, which is why IndexerNow puts the check and the fix on one balance: the same credits run a bulk URL Inspection sweep, audit a page that came back 'Crawled – currently not indexed', and push it again once you've fixed it. A monitor that only reports leaves you to find the cause elsewhere.
How often should I re-check index status?
For most sites, weekly is plenty, and after a migration or a big publish, daily for a week. IndexerNow can schedule the sweep and only re-check URLs whose state actually changed, so a recurring check doesn't burn credits confirming what you already knew.