Indexing and Sitemaps
WebDecoy uses four complementary indexing mechanisms for docs.webdecoy.com:
- The XML sitemap is the complete discovery source for canonical documentation URLs.
- Google Search Console is the authoritative place to inspect Google indexing and search performance.
- Bing Webmaster Tools reports Bing indexing plus citations and grounding queries in AI Performance.
- IndexNow sends an additional change notification after a production documentation deployment.
IndexNow does not replace the sitemap or Google Search Console. It is a recrawl hint supported by participating search engines, not a guarantee that a URL will be crawled, indexed, or ranked.
Host-scoped verification
Section titled “Host-scoped verification”The documentation host publishes a public verification key at:
https://docs.webdecoy.com/8686315b739b2303625bcc25c30f280b.txt
The key is intentionally public and is separate from the key used by webdecoy.com. Deployment automation rejects any URL whose origin is not exactly https://docs.webdecoy.com.
Deployment notifications
Section titled “Deployment notifications”On a production push, automation derives changed canonical documentation URLs from Git history. Renames submit both old and new paths. Broad template or configuration changes expand from the built sitemap. URLs are batched, rate-limited, and retried for bounded periods when the endpoint responds with HTTP 429.
Notification failures are logged but do not fail the documentation deployment.
Freshness and provenance
Section titled “Freshness and provenance”Every documentation page displays its last meaningful Git update. The same commit date is emitted as dateModified in page JSON-LD and as <lastmod> in the XML sitemap. The deployment workflow fetches full Git history so these dates describe the content rather than the build time.
Documentation JSON-LD identifies the page as a WebDecoy technical article, with its canonical URL, publisher, description, and modification date. Structured data must stay aligned with visible content; it is not a substitute for accurate instructions or a signal to add schema types that the page does not support.
Measuring AI search
Section titled “Measuring AI search”Keep three signals separate:
| Signal | What it proves | Where to inspect it |
|---|---|---|
| Citation | An answer used a WebDecoy URL as a source | Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance and sampled answer URLs |
| Referral | A person clicked through to WebDecoy | GA4 and WebDecoy AI Traffic |
| Crawl | A retrieval bot could fetch a page | CDN/WAF request logs and HTTP status checks |
Google includes traffic from its AI search features in the normal Search Console Web reporting and may expose a separate Generative AI report. Neither Google nor Bing requires a special AI text file, proprietary schema, or artificial “AI chunking” for eligibility. Normal crawlability, useful visible content, internal links, and supported structured data remain the foundation.
Both WebDecoy hosts send analytics to the shared GA4 property. Clicks to app.webdecoy.com emit signup_click with the destination, visible link text, and page region. Mark that event as a key event in GA4 to compare cited and AI-referred landing pages with signup intent.