IndexNow
Also known as: IndexNow protocol
IndexNow is an open protocol, announced by Microsoft Bing and Yandex in 2021, that lets a website notify participating search engines instantly, with a single request, when pages are added, updated or deleted.
Search engines normally discover changes by recrawling sites at intervals, which can mean days before a new page is indexed. With IndexNow, the site reports the changed URLs itself.
How it works
- You generate a key for your site and publish it as a text file at the site’s root, so search engines can verify the notification really comes from the owner.
- When a page is added, updated or deleted, its URL is sent to an IndexNow endpoint along with the key. A single request can include up to 10,000 URLs.
- A notification sent to one search engine is shared with the other participating engines.
According to indexnow.org, participating search engines include Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep. Google doesn’t support IndexNow; for Google, sitemaps and Search Console remain the way to go.
How it relates to AI
Microsoft Copilot uses Bing’s search index, and some other AI assistants are also known to draw on Bing data for web search. Getting content into Bing quickly can therefore help fresh information surface sooner in some AI answers. IndexNow doesn’t guarantee indexing; it just tells the search engine that a URL has changed.
Example
When an online store updates a product’s price, its publishing system automatically submits the product URL to IndexNow. Bing can then revisit the page without waiting for its next scheduled crawl.