Technical SEO · Intermediate

IndexNow

IndexNow is an open protocol that lets a website notify participating search engines, including Bing, the moment a page is added, changed or deleted, instead of waiting to be recrawled.

By Thryv StudioUpdated

Level
Intermediate
Supported by
Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver and others
Not used by
Google
Needs
A key file hosted on your site
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What is IndexNow?

IndexNow lets you ping search engines with a list of URLs that changed. You host a key file on your site to prove ownership, then send URLs to an IndexNow endpoint; participating engines share the notification with each other.

Why it matters

Bing's index feeds Microsoft Copilot and is used by other search products, so faster updates there help your changes show up sooner across those services.

Best practices

  1. Send URLs when pages are published, updated or deleted, not your whole site every day.
  2. Many CMSs and CDNs can send IndexNow notifications automatically.
  3. Keep your XML sitemap too; Google relies on it.

Frequently asked questions

Does IndexNow help with Google?

No. Google doesn't participate. Use sitemaps and Search Console for Google.

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