IndexNow

IndexNow
Year startedOctober 18, 2021; 5 years ago (2021-10-18)
First publishedOctober 18, 2021; 5 years ago (2021-10-18)
OrganizationMicrosoft, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz
AuthorsSawood Alam, Internet Archive; Martin Fiala, Seznam; Vishnevsky Gleb Yandex; Fabrice Canel Microsoft
Base standardsHTTP, JSON, URL, UTF-8
Related standardsRSS, robots.txt, Sitemaps
DomainWeb indexing, Search engine optimization
LicenseCC-BY-SA 4.0
Websitewww.indexnow.org

IndexNow is an open protocol that allows website owners to inform participating search engines directly whenever website content is ready for indexing. The system was introduced by Microsoft Bing and Yandex.

History

IndexNow was launched in October 2021 as a collaboration between Microsoft Bing and Yandex. The protocol was developed with the intention to make the web more efficient by enabling faster content discovery and minimizing server load caused by repeated web crawling.

In January 2022, the Bing Webmaster team created a plugin for Wordpress.

In July 2023, Naver, a prominent South Korean search engine, announced its support for the IndexNow protocol.

In September 2023, Wix.com, a website builder, announced a native integration that automatically submit URL updates to IndexNow by default, as content is published on each site.

Bing Webmaster Tools added dedicated "IndexNow Insights Report" to their toolset in March 2024.

In May 2025, native integrations with Shopify and Amazon (company) were announced as a means to manage shopping content by including Schema.org mark up in the IndexNow feed.

How it works

IndexNow is an open protocol. It operates at the application layer of the OSI model, as it enables communication between web servers (or content management systems) and search engines using HTTP requests to notify about content changes.

Traditionally, search engines rely on web crawlers to discover new URLs before indexing the webpages. Crawling is not automatic and in the case of Google, it can take a few days or event a few weeks for new content to be crawled. By contrast, IndexNow uses an API to notify search engines about content changes to content in order to trigger a recrawl.

To implement IndexNow, a website owner must generate an API key and host it in a text file at the site's root. When content changes, the website sends a simple HTTP request to a search engine endpoint, including the URL and the API key.

For example:

https://www.bing.com/indexnow?url=https://www.example.com/page.html&key=your-api-key

When a search engine receives an IndexNow notification, it automatically shares that information with all other search engines that support the protocol.

Websites can send notifications for individual pages or submit lists of up to 10,000 URLs at once.

Adoption and tools

IndexNow Insights Report
IndexNow Insights Report in Bing Webmaster Tools

In July 2022, reportedly 7% of new URLs clicked on Bing Search were sourced from the IndexNow protocol. As of September 2023, IndexNow was used by over 60 million websites, publishing over 1.4 billion URLs daily. As of 2024, IndexNow has grown to 2.5billion submitted URLs with 17% of all clicked URLs on Bing coming from IndexNow.

Search engines

As of 2025, several search engines support IndexNow, including:

Platforms and integrations

Since its release, IndexNow has been integrated into various platforms and services:

Google's adoption

In 2021, a spokesperson From Google confirmed they were "testing the potential benefits of the protocol" with regards to making "web crawling more efficient". As of 2022, Google had not officially adopted the IndexNow protocol. Google instead relies on an Indexing API for content like job postings.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "IndexNow - Instantly Index your web content in Search Engines". blogs.bing.com. 2021-10-18. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  2. ↑ Schwartz, Barry (2022-01-13). "IndexNow now officially co-sharing URLs between Microsoft Bing and Yandex". Search Engine Land. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  3. ↑ Enge, Eric; Spencer, Stephan; Stricchiola, Jessie (August 30, 2023). The Art of SEO. O'Reilly Media. p. 2. ISBN 9781098102562. In October 2021, Bing and Yandex announced a new initiative called IndexNow that pings search engines directly whenever content on a site is created, modified, or deleted. The objective is to reduce the inherent delay in waiting for a search engine crawler to return to the site to discover those changes, shortening the time it takes for the search engines to understand how to find and rank new or changed content, or remove deleted content from their indexes. In addition to removing the burden of manually notifying the search engines of changes you make to your site, this will reduce the load placed on your servers by the crawlers of search engines that support IndexNow.
  4. 1 2 3 Opiah, Abigail (2022-01-06). "Microsoft unveils new IndexNow plugin for WordPress websites". TechRadar. Retrieved 2025-07-03.
  5. 1 2 Schwartz, Barry (2023-07-26). "Naver, Korean search engine, now supports IndexNow". Search Engine Land. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  6. ↑ Schwartz, Barry (2023-09-21). "Wix adds IndexNow support for faster indexing". Search Engine Land. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  7. 1 2 Hines, Kristi (2023-09-21). "Microsoft Bing & Wix Announce IndexNow Integration". Search Engine Journal. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  8. 1 2 Schwartz, Barry (2023-09-29). "Wix Supports IndexNow". Search Engine Roundtable. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  9. 1 2 3 Schwartz, Barry (2024-03-06). "Bing Webmaster Tools IndexNow Insights & Top SEO Insights". Search Engine Roundtable. Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  10. 1 2 "IndexNow Drives Smarter and Faster Content Discovery". blogs.bing.com. 2025-05-19. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  11. ↑ Schwartz, Barry (2025-05-19). "IndexNow helps with faster indexing of product updates and shopping ads". Search Engine Land. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  12. ↑ "Quickly index these web pages with IndexNow". DEV Community. 2024-09-19. Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  13. 1 2 3 4 "Documentation | IndexNow.org". www.indexnow.org. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  14. ↑ "In-Depth Guide to How Google Search Works | Google Search Central | Documentation". Google for Developers. Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  15. ↑ "Ask Google to Recrawl Your Website | Google Search Central | Documentation". Google for Developers. Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  16. ↑ Montti, Roger (2021-10-18). "IndexNow is a Major Change to Search Engine Indexing". Search Engine Journal. Retrieved 2025-06-30.
  17. ↑ "IndexNow: Announcing Sharing of Submitted URLs". blogs.bing.com. 2022-01-13. Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  18. 1 2 3 Schwartz, Barry (2022-08-12). "IndexNow attributed for 7% of all new URLs clicked on in Bing in the past month". Search Engine Land. Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  19. 1 2 3 Schwartz, Barry (2021-10-18). "IndexNow - new initiative by Microsoft and Yandex to push content to search engines". Search Engine Land. Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  20. ↑ "IndexNow 소개". searchadvisor.naver.com (in Korean). Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  21. ↑ "Protokol IndexNow". Nápověda Seznam.cz Vyhledávání (in Czech). Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  22. ↑ Montti, Roger (2022-06-08). "Yoast On Why It's Adopting IndexNow Protocol". Search Engine Journal. Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  23. 1 2 Schwartz, Barry (2025-05-20). "IndexNow Now Works With Product Schema; Shopify & Soon Amazon". Search Engine Roundtable. Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  24. ↑ Cutler, Kelly (December 3, 2023). Search Marketing: A Strategic Approach to SEO and SEM. Kogan Page. p. 52. ISBN 9781398612815.
  25. ↑ Krivit, Alex; Das, Abhi (2021-10-18). "Crawler Hints Update: Cloudflare Supports IndexNow and Announces General Availability". The Cloudflare Blog. Retrieved 2025-07-03.
  26. ↑ "IndexNow Sync". Majinsoft.
  27. ↑ Schwartz, Barry (2021-11-10). "Google is testing the IndexNow protocol for sustainability". Search Engine Land. Retrieved 2025-07-09.
  28. ↑ Beilharz, Felix (December 12, 2023). Online Marketing Manager in Handbuch für die Praxis (in German). O'Reilly. p. 207. ISBN 9783960108245. IndexNow/Indexing API – Die Suchmaschinen Bing und Yandex setzen neben Sitemaps zusätzlich auf das IndexNow-Protokoll, um neue Seiten schnell aufzufinden, zu crawlen und zu indexieren. Google verlsst sich hier weiterhin auf die eigenen Crawling-Ressourcen und greift lediglich bei kurzlebigen Seitentypen wie Jobpostings und Livestream-Videos auf die eigene Indexing API zurück. Diese erlaubt es nicht nur, neue Inhalte schnell zu indexieren, sondern auch URLs zuverlässig entfernen zu lassen.