Artificial indentations have been used as an auxiliary method to study metallic surfaces' contact fatigue behaviour since the early 90's. In this work indentation techniques based on hardness measurements were tested on the surface of austempered ductile iron (ADI) discs. These discs were tested on a twin-disc machine. The evolution of the areas around indentations (in this work these areas are called ZAF - Zones Affected by Fatigue) was followed during each twin-disc test and the surface condition of such artificially indented zones was characterized. These zones suffered intense plastic deformation and wear in early test stages and were then progressively damaged by contact fatigue. A coherent growth of each ZAF was observed along each contact fatigue test. It is shown that ZAFs' growth follows a trend simmilar to Paris law, revealing that the use of artificial indentations can be used as an auxiliary method to study contact fatigue phenomena.