Multiple domains and locales¶

One application, several hosts¶

Every host gets its own key (engines verify https://<host>/<key>.txt on the submitted host):

'indexnowkit/yii3' => [
    'key' => $_ENV['INDEXNOW_KEY'] ?? null,               // www.example.com, the base_url host
    'base_url' => 'https://www.example.com',
    'hosts' => [
        'example.de' => $_ENV['INDEXNOW_KEY_DE'] ?? null,
        'shop.example.com' => [
            'key' => $_ENV['INDEXNOW_KEY_SHOP'] ?? null,
            'base_url' => 'https://shop.example.com',    // origin for this host's URLs outside requests
            'engines' => ['yandex', 'bing'],             // per-host engine list
        ],
    ],
    'strict_hosts' => true,                             // hosts not listed are skipped, not sent under the default key
],

The key file handler serves each host's own key only (a request for example.de's key on www.example.com is 404) and answers with Vary: Host, so a shared CDN never caches one host's file for another. ./yii indexnow:check fetches every host's key file; --host=example.de limits it to one.

Behind a proxy or a CDN¶

The handler takes the host from the request URI of the PSR-7 request the application hands it — the host the application itself believes it is answering under. Making that host trustworthy is the application's middleware, not this package: behind a load balancer or a CDN the origin sees the proxy's Host (or the client's, forged) until a trusted-proxy middleware has rewritten the request from X-Forwarded-Host / Forwarded. In a Yii3 application that is Yiisoft\ProxyMiddleware\TrustedHostsNetworkResolver, and it belongs before the router in the middleware stack, so every downstream handler — the key file route included — sees the same host.

Two consequences worth knowing:

Without such a middleware behind a proxy, every host reaches the handler as the proxy's, so only that host's key file is served and the others answer 404. ./yii indexnow:check fetches the files over HTTP from outside and therefore reports exactly what an engine will see.
The same host is what URLs generated during a web request are built on (see the table below), so a proxy that is not resolved makes a request announce its pages under the proxy's hostname. indexnow:check run inside a web request warns when that host and base_url differ.

Rules on another host¶

#[IndexNow(route: 'product/view', params: ['slug' => 'slug'], host: 'shop.example.com')]

host can also be an accessor (host: 'tenant.domain') for multi-tenant records. The URL is generated through UrlGeneratorInterface::generateAbsolute() with the scheme and host of hosts.<host>.base_url, else https://<host>.

Locales¶

'router' => ['locales' => ['en', 'de'], 'locale_parameter' => '_language'],
'locale_hosts' => ['de' => 'example.de'],           // optional: one host per locale

#[IndexNow(route: 'article/view', params: ['slug' => 'slug'], locales: 'all')]

locales: 'current' (default) generates one URL; 'all' one per router.locales; a list as given.
The locale is passed as the router.locale_parameter argument (_language, the convention of yii-demo), so a route whose pattern declares it (Route::get('/{_language:en|de}/articles/{slug}')->name('article/view')) puts it in the path; without such a route it becomes a query parameter — declare the argument in the route.
With locale_hosts, a rule without host generates each locale on that locale's host and under that host's key.

Origin of generated URLs¶

Context	Origin
web request	the request's scheme and host (`CurrentRoute` carries the URI)
console command	`base_url` (no request to take the host from; `check` says so when it is unset)
rule with `host:`	`hosts.<host>.base_url`, else `https://<host>`

A staging copy reached under another hostname would otherwise submit its URLs under the production key; that is what strict_hosts: true prevents, and why indexnow:check warns when it is off in production.

www and apex¶

example.com and www.example.com are two hosts to IndexNow: each needs its own key file, and a URL submitted under the other one's key answers 422. Pick the canonical one (the one your pages link to and <link rel="canonical"> names), put it in base_url, redirect the other with 301, and do not list it in hosts — listing both would announce two copies of every page. With strict_hosts: true a request that reached the application under the non-canonical name submits nothing instead of announcing duplicates.

hreflang clusters¶

Localized pages that point at each other with hreflang are one cluster to the engines: when one changes, announce the cluster. A rule with locales: 'all' does that for the locales of one record; for locales living on other hosts locale_hosts sends each locale to its host under that host's key. When translations are separate records, via: walks to them:

#[IndexNow(route: 'article/view', params: ['slug' => 'slug'], locales: 'all')]   // every locale of this article
#[IndexNow(via: 'translations')]                                                 // or: the sibling records' own rules