What is IndexNow?

IndexNow is an open protocol that lets website owners actively tell search engines that a URL is new, has changed, or has been deleted. The website sends a short request with the URL and a key to an endpoint, and all participating search engines receive the notification. Microsoft Bing and Yandex introduced IndexNow in October 2021; Google is not one of the participating search engines.

Term profile

How does IndexNow work?

IndexNow works in 3 steps: create a key, place the key file on the website, and submit changed URLs to an endpoint. The key proves that the notification comes from the owner of the website.

1. Step 1, create a key: The key consists of 8 to 128 characters. Letters, digits, and hyphens are allowed.
2. Step 2, place the key file: A text file containing the key sits in the root directory of the website and is named after the key itself, for example https://www.your-domain.com/<key>.txt. Alternatively, the keyLocation parameter points to a different location.
3. Step 3, submit the URL: The website sends the changed address to an IndexNow endpoint. For a single URL, a simple request is enough:

https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://www.your-domain.com/new-page/&key=<key>

For many addresses at once, the endpoint accepts a POST request in JSON format with up to 10,000 URLs. It is enough to contact a single participating search engine. The search engines in the IndexNow network automatically share incoming notifications with each other.

The endpoint responds with an HTTP status code. 200 means the notification was accepted, 202 that the key is still being validated. 403 reports an invalid key, 422 URLs that do not match the key’s domain, and 429 too many requests in a short time.

Which search engines support IndexNow?

According to indexnow.org, IndexNow is supported by 6 search engines: Amazon, Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex, and Yep. Bing is by far the most important of them in Germany. Through the Bing index, a notification also reaches services that build on Bing data.

Google is not among them. Google continues to discover new and changed pages through its own crawling, through links, and through the sitemap. For Google, a sitemap with accurate modification dates and the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console therefore remain the ways to get a page noticed sooner. An IndexNow notification has no effect on Google Search, neither positive nor negative.

What is the difference between IndexNow and an XML sitemap?

A sitemap is a list that search engines pick up when they get around to it, while IndexNow is a notification the website sends at the moment of the change. In technical terms, this is pull versus push. The two methods complement each other.

For large websites with many changes, IndexNow saves crawl budget. Search engines need to fetch unchanged pages less often to discover changes and can focus their resources on the URLs that were submitted.

Why does IndexNow matter for AI visibility?

IndexNow speeds up updates to the Bing index, and AI assistants such as Microsoft Copilot rely on this index for their web search. ChatGPT also uses data from Bing, among other sources, for its search. The faster a changed page arrives there, the sooner an AI answer works with the current version.

Three cases show when this matters:

1. Changed facts: New prices, opening hours, contacts, or services. An AI answer based on the old version misleads prospects.
2. New content: A new guide or a new service page is available sooner as a potential source.
3. Deleted pages: If you submit a deleted URL, the search engine learns sooner that it should no longer serve the old version.

For AI search outside Google, IndexNow is a small building block that takes little effort. How such technical levers work together with content, entities, and structured data is described on our page about AEO (answer engine optimization), also known as GEO.

How do you set up IndexNow?

IndexNow can be set up in 3 ways: through an extension in the content management system, through the content delivery network, or through your own script. The first way is the easiest for most websites.

• CMS extension: For WordPress, Microsoft offers its own IndexNow extension, and several widely used SEO plugins already include the feature. They create the key, place the file, and automatically submit every published or changed page.
• Content delivery network: Cloudflare reports changes through its Crawler Hints feature via IndexNow, without the website having to send anything itself.
• Your own script: Shops and portals with custom software call the endpoint directly, for example after every import of new products.

Bing Webmaster Tools show whether the notifications arrive. There, a dedicated IndexNow report shows which URLs were submitted and through which channel they came in. A notification speeds up crawling; the search engine still decides on indexing based on the quality of the page.

Which URLs should you submit through IndexNow?

4 kinds of URLs are submitted through IndexNow: new, changed, deleted, and redirected ones. For deleted pages, the URL then returns the HTTP status code 404 or 410, and for moved content a 301 redirect.

Two rules keep submissions clean. An unchanged URL is not submitted repeatedly; indexnow.org advises waiting at least five minutes between two submissions of the same address and not sending unchanged URLs several times a day. And only addresses that a crawler should actually fetch and index are submitted. Pages with noindex or parameter variants do not belong in the submission.

Frequently asked questions about IndexNow

Does IndexNow guarantee that a page gets indexed?
IndexNow does not guarantee indexing. The notification makes participating search engines discover a change sooner and crawl the URL faster; whether the page enters the index is still their own decision.

Does IndexNow replace the XML sitemap?
IndexNow complements the XML sitemap. Google still relies on the sitemap and its own crawling, and Bing also uses the sitemap to know the complete inventory of a website.

Does IndexNow hurt rankings on Google?
IndexNow has no influence on rankings in Google, because Google does not receive the notifications. Setting it up therefore carries no risk for Google Search.