IndexNow is an easy way for website owners to instantly inform search engines about the latest content changes on their website. It matters because without IndexNow, it can take days to weeks for search engines to discover that content has changed. You ping the engines when a page is new, updated or deleted. They come and read it.
Why IndexNow exists
Search engines find changes by crawling, which means visiting pages again and again to see if anything moved. IndexNow flips that. It uses an API to notify search engines about content changes to trigger a recrawl, instead of relying on crawlers to discover new URLs. It was built to make the web more efficient, with faster content discovery and less server load from repeated crawling.
It costs nothing to use. IndexNow is a free, open-source protocol, offered under the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License.
A short history
IndexNow launched in October 2021 as a collaboration between Microsoft Bing and Yandex. In January 2022, the Bing Webmaster team released a plugin for WordPress. Naver announced support in July 2023, and in September 2023 Wix added a native integration that submits URL updates by default. Bing Webmaster Tools added an IndexNow Insights report in March 2024, and native integrations with Shopify and Amazon were announced in May 2025.
How it works
Setup takes two pieces.
- A key. You generate an API key and host it in a text file at the site's root. That file proves you own the site.
- A ping. When a page changes, you send an HTTP request with the URL and your key. You can notify one page at a time or submit lists of up to 10,000 URLs at once.
You only need to ping one engine. When a search engine receives an IndexNow notification, it shares it with every other engine that supports the protocol.
An example
This site has its own key file at shipfound.co/c070e1577a5ffa0dabf9430537c7b5dd.txt. Open it and you see one line: the key itself. It is public on purpose. When a new page like this one goes live, a single request lists its URL with that key, and Bing can come read the page without waiting for its next crawl.
Who supports it
IndexNow has support from Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep. Cloudflare supports it through Crawler Hints, and eBay, LinkedIn, MSN, GitHub and Amazon use it.
How widely it is used
As of September 2023, IndexNow was used by over 60 million websites, publishing over 1.4 billion URLs daily. The share of Bing traffic it feeds has grown too. In July 2022, reportedly 7% of new URLs clicked on Bing Search came from IndexNow. By 2024, 17% of all clicked URLs on Bing came from IndexNow.
How to check it works
Open your key file in a browser and confirm it loads as plain text with only the key in it. Then look at the IndexNow Insights report in Bing Webmaster Tools to see the URLs Bing received from you. If you build with Claude Code or Codex, Shipfound adds the key file as a pull request and sends the ping for new pages once it is live.
Common mistakes
- A key file with extra text or HTML around the key. It must hold the key and nothing else.
- Pinging on every deploy for pages that did not change. Send the URLs that changed.
- Expecting Google to pick it up. It does not use IndexNow (see below), so submit your sitemap in Search Console as well. More in how to submit a sitemap to Bing and Google.
Frequently asked questions
Is IndexNow free?
Yes. It is a free, open-source protocol, and there is nothing to sign up for beyond hosting your key.
Does Google support IndexNow?
No. In 2021 a Google spokesperson confirmed they were testing the protocol, but as of 2022 Google had not officially adopted it. Google relies on its own Indexing API for content like job postings.
Should I let search engines index my site?
For any page you want people to find, yes. IndexNow only speeds up discovery. If a page is blocked in robots.txt or marked noindex, a ping will not get it into results.