I've heard about the new IndexNow protocol from Microsoft and Yandex. How exactly does this initiative change the way search engines discover content, and why is its open-source nature a significant development for SEO professionals?

The IndexNow protocol fundamentally shifts content discovery from a 'pull' to a 'push' model, allowing you to instantly notify search engines of changes. Its open-source design means any search engine can adopt it, creating a more unified and efficient standard for the entire web. Instead of waiting for crawlers, your website or CMS actively sends a signal to an API the moment a URL is published or updated. This signal is then shared among all participating search engines, like Microsoft Bing and Yandex. The primary benefit is the dramatic reduction in indexing time, from potential weeks to mere minutes. This approach offers: Immediate discovery: Your content is crawled on-demand, not on a search engine's schedule.Improved efficiency: It limits the need for exploratory crawls, reducing server load.Greater control: You gain more agency over when your content is indexed. The open-source license promotes wide adoption, which could reshape SEO best practices. Discover how to integrate this protocol in our complete analysis.

For a publisher focused on timely news or e-commerce promotions, how does the IndexNow 'push' method for content discovery compare to the traditional 'pull' crawling system, and what factors should I consider when evaluating its impact on my site?

The IndexNow 'push' method offers superior speed and efficiency, making it ideal for time-sensitive content, whereas the traditional 'pull' system is passive and can cause costly delays. For publishers, the key difference is moving from waiting for discovery to actively triggering it. The 'pull' model relies on search engine crawlers visiting your site on their own schedule, which can take days or weeks. This is a significant disadvantage for promotions or breaking news. The 'push' model flips this dynamic: your site instantly notifies participating search engines like Microsoft Bing and Yandex about a change. Consider these factors: Speed to Index: 'Push' provides near-instant crawl requests versus unpredictable delays with 'pull'.Server Load: 'Push' reduces redundant crawling, lowering the strain on your server.SEO Control: You dictate the discovery timeline, giving you a competitive edge. By adopting IndexNow, you prioritize your most important updates. Learn more about the strategic advantages by reading the full article.

With major search engines like Microsoft Bing and Yandex backing the IndexNow protocol, what does their collaboration signal about the future of web crawling, and how does this lend credibility to the system's promise of faster indexing?

The collaboration between Microsoft and Yandex signals a major industry shift toward a more efficient, sustainable, and publisher-friendly web. Their joint support provides strong evidence that IndexNow is a viable solution to the long-standing problem of indexing delays. This partnership validates the protocol's core premise: that a 'push' system is more effective than the legacy 'pull' method. Search engines benefit by reducing wasteful, exploratory crawls, which consume immense computational resources and put a strain on web servers. For website owners, the backing of these tech giants means: Reliability: The protocol is built and supported by established players, ensuring stability.Interoperability: A notification sent to one participating search engine is shared with all others.Strategic Advantage: Early adoption gives you a lead in getting content seen on platforms like Microsoft Bing. This move suggests a future where publishers and search engines work more cooperatively. Explore the full implications of this trend in our detailed analysis.

I see that a CMS like WordPress can integrate with IndexNow. How does this specific implementation work, and what tangible benefits does it provide for a small business owner who uses WordPress for their website?

A WordPress integration with IndexNow automates the notification process, giving small business owners a powerful tool for instant indexing without any manual effort. It turns content updates into immediate signals for search engines to crawl your site. When you publish or update a page on your WordPress site, a plugin or the core CMS can automatically generate and send a notification to the IndexNow API. This simple action informs all participating search engines, including Microsoft Bing, that new content is ready for review. For a small business, this offers clear advantages: Effortless SEO: The system works in the background, requiring no technical expertise after initial setup.Faster Visibility for Sales: New product pages or promotions get indexed quickly, reaching customers sooner.Competitive Edge: Your site can react to market changes faster than competitors still relying on traditional crawling. This direct line of communication ensures your most current information is always available to searchers. To see how this impacts conversions, read our complete guide.

For my company's website, I want to ensure our latest blog posts and product updates are indexed as quickly as possible. What are the concrete steps for implementing the IndexNow protocol to achieve this result?

Implementing IndexNow is a straightforward technical process that involves generating a key and configuring your server or CMS to send notifications upon content changes. This ensures search engines like Microsoft Bing are immediately alerted to your new URLs. To get started, you will need to follow a clear stepwise plan. First, you generate an API key and host it in a text file in your site's root directory to verify ownership. After verification, you can submit URLs individually or in bulk to the API endpoint. The steps are: Generate your unique IndexNow API key.Host the key file on your server for verification by search engines.Configure your system to send a POST request to the API whenever a page is added, updated, or removed.You can submit a single URL or a list of up to 10,000 URLs per API call. Many CMS platforms are developing plugins to automate this, simplifying the process even further. Discover the full technical specifications and best practices in our complete article.

Many websites lose potential sales and customers because their new URLs take days to be discovered by search engines. How does the IndexNow API serve as a direct solution to this common and costly problem of indexing latency?

IndexNow directly solves the problem of indexing latency by replacing passive waiting with active notification. It empowers you to tell search engines about new content instantly, closing the gap between publishing and discovery that causes lost traffic and sales. The core issue is that traditional crawlers operate on their own schedule, which may not align with your business needs. A new product launch or critical update could go unnoticed for days or weeks. IndexNow provides a simple yet powerful solution: It creates a direct line of communication to search engines like Microsoft Bing and Yandex.It allows you to 'push' URLs for immediate crawling consideration, rather than waiting to be 'pulled'.It ensures time-sensitive content gets prioritized, maximizing its visibility and commercial impact. By eliminating the guesswork and delays, you can better synchronize your marketing efforts with search engine visibility. See how this can boost your conversion rates in our full report.

Redundant and frequent crawling from search engine bots can place a significant load on my web server, impacting performance. How does the 'push' mechanism of IndexNow help mitigate this problem and improve overall site efficiency?

The IndexNow protocol mitigates server strain by making crawling more intelligent and efficient, reducing the need for search engines to perform constant, resource-intensive exploratory crawls. It shifts the dynamic so that bots only visit when there is a confirmed content change. Under the old 'pull' model, search engines repeatedly crawl your entire site, including unchanged pages, just to check for updates. This generates unnecessary server requests and can slow down your website for actual users. IndexNow offers a smarter solution: Targeted Crawling: Bots are directed only to URLs that you have confirmed are new or updated.Reduced Bot Traffic: It eliminates the redundant 'check-in' crawls that waste server resources.Improved Server Performance: A lighter server load means a faster, more reliable experience for your visitors. By telling search engines exactly where to look, you help them conserve their resources and, in turn, protect your own. Dive deeper into the technical efficiencies in our complete guide.

Considering the development of open-source standards like IndexNow, how is the fundamental relationship between content publishers and search engines likely to evolve, and what should I be doing now to prepare for this future?

The rise of protocols like IndexNow points to a more collaborative and symbiotic future between publishers and search engines, moving away from a one-sided discovery process. This evolution gives you more direct control and responsibility in the indexing pipeline. In the past, the relationship was passive, you would publish content and hope search engines found it. IndexNow, supported by Microsoft and Yandex, transforms this into an active partnership. To prepare, you should: Adopt a 'push' mindset: Start thinking of content indexing as an active notification process you control.Prioritize technical SEO: Ensure your site is technically capable of integrating with new APIs and protocols.Monitor industry trends: Stay informed as more search engines potentially join this open standard. This shift empowers publishers to ensure their content is discovered efficiently, while search engines get cleaner signals. To understand the full strategic implications, explore our complete analysis.

As more search engines and websites adopt the IndexNow protocol, what are the potential long-term implications for the web's overall infrastructure, specifically regarding server load and the energy consumption of crawling?

Widespread adoption of IndexNow could lead to a greener, more efficient web by significantly reducing the redundant crawling that consumes vast amounts of energy and server resources. This shift from 'pull' to 'push' has profound long-term implications for digital sustainability. Every day, search engine bots perform trillions of crawls, many of which are unnecessary because the content has not changed. This process requires massive data centers and electricity. By allowing websites to notify search engines like Microsoft Bing and Yandex about changes, IndexNow creates a more intelligent system: It minimizes wasteful exploratory crawls, directly lowering server load across the internet.It reduces the computational power and energy needed for content discovery.It promotes a more sustainable model for how the internet is indexed. This could be a critical step toward reducing the web's carbon footprint. Explore the full scope of this environmental impact in our detailed report.

My small business relies on publishing timely sales announcements and new inventory online. How can I specifically implement the IndexNow protocol to ensure these critical updates are discovered by search engines almost instantly to maximize sales?

For a small business, implementing IndexNow ensures your time-sensitive sales information gets indexed rapidly, directly connecting your promotions with customer searches. This requires a one-time setup that automates notifications for all future updates. The goal is to make sure that when a customer searches for your new offer, search engines like Microsoft Bing have already indexed it. Here is a simple plan: Check for a Plugin: If you use a CMS like WordPress, search for an IndexNow plugin to handle the integration automatically.Manual Setup: If a plugin is not available, have a developer generate an API key, place it on your server, and configure your site to send a POST request to the API with the new URL each time a sale page is published.Integrate with Your Workflow: Make this notification a standard part of your process for launching new products or promotions. This proactive approach guarantees your most valuable updates are not lost in indexing queues. See the full implementation guide for more technical details.

What evidence from the support by companies like Microsoft and Yandex suggests that IndexNow is a reliable and proven strategy for reducing the time it takes to get new or updated web pages listed in search results?

The backing from industry giants like Microsoft and Yandex provides powerful evidence of IndexNow's effectiveness, as they would not invest in a protocol that does not deliver on its promise of faster indexing. Their participation validates its ability to solve a real-world problem for both search engines and publishers. These companies operate at a massive scale and have a vested interest in making the web more efficient. By co-developing and supporting IndexNow, they are effectively stating that the 'push' model is superior for modern content discovery. This support demonstrates: A commitment to improving the crawling process.Confidence that the protocol can reduce indexing time from days or weeks to much shorter intervals.A strategic decision that this approach benefits their own search products, like Microsoft Bing, by providing users with fresher results. Their involvement is a strong market signal that this is a proven and forward-looking strategy. To see more data on its impact, read the full analysis.

IndexNow Protocol: How Push Indexing Works in 2026 (and Who Actually Supports It)

Amol Ghemud
IndexNow Protocol: How Push Indexing Works in 2026 (and Who Actually Supports It)
Published: October 21, 2021

Contributors: Amol Ghemud
Published: October 21, 2021

Summary

The IndexNow protocol lets your site tell participating search engines the moment a URL is added, updated or deleted, instead of waiting days or weeks for a crawler. Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep all accept submissions, and Amazon and the Internet Archive run endpoints too, but Google does not. This guide covers how it works, who supports it in 2026, and how to switch it on.

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Publish a page, then wait. That gap between hitting publish and a search engine noticing it is where traffic quietly leaks away. The IndexNow protocol closes the gap by flipping content discovery from pull to push. Instead of waiting for a crawler to wander back, your site tells participating search engines the moment a URL changes.

Microsoft Bing and Yandex launched IndexNow in October 2021, and it is no longer an experiment. Microsoft reported over 3.5 billion URLs submitted per day in December 2024. Here is what it does, which engines accept submissions in 2026, why Google is not one of them, and how to switch it on.

What Is the IndexNow Protocol?

The IndexNow protocol is an open standard that lets a website tell participating search engines, in a single API call, that a URL has been added, updated or deleted. Submit once and the notification is shared with every IndexNow-enabled engine, so you do not have to ping each one separately.

Without it, discovery is guesswork. Search engines re-crawl on their own schedule, and the protocol’s own documentation says that process “can be slow, taking days or even weeks”. Multiply that across a news site, a job board or a store with shifting stock and the cost of the delay gets obvious fast.

How IndexNow works in 4 steps

Generate a key of 8 to 128 characters using letters, numbers and hyphens.
Save it as a UTF-8 text file named after the key at your site root, so it loads at https://yourdomain.com/your-key.txt.
Send the changed URL to an IndexNow endpoint, or up to 10,000 URLs in a single POST request.
The receiving engine verifies your key, shares the submission with the other participants, and schedules a crawl.

What IndexNow will not do

Submission is a signal, not a promise. The official FAQ is blunt: “Submitting a URL does not guarantee immediate indexing.” Every URL you send also counts toward your site’s crawl quota, so firing your whole sitemap at the API burns budget you would rather spend on pages that actually changed.

Which Search Engines Support IndexNow in 2026?

Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep all accept IndexNow submissions, and Amazon and the Internet Archive run endpoints of their own. Google does not. Send your URL to any single endpoint, or to the global endpoint at api.indexnow.org, and it reaches every participating service.

This list was checked at indexnow.org in September 2026. Re-check it before you build anything custom, because participants keep getting added.

IndexNow protocol endpoints and participating services (source: indexnow.org, checked September 2026)
Service	Type	IndexNow endpoint	Notes
Microsoft Bing	Search engine	http://www.bing.com/indexnow	Co-launched the protocol with Yandex in October 2021
Yandex	Search engine	yandex.com/indexnow	The other co-founder of the protocol
Naver	Search engine	searchadvisor.naver.com/indexnow	South Korean search portal
Seznam.cz	Search engine	search.seznam.cz/indexnow	Czech search engine
Yep	Search engine	indexnow.yep.com/indexnow	Independent web search engine
Amazon	Crawler (Amazonbot)	indexnow.amazonbot.amazon/indexnow	Runs its own endpoint for Amazonbot
Internet Archive	Web archive	Listed in indexnow.org/searchengines.json	Named by Microsoft as an adopter in December 2024
Global endpoint	Shared relay	api.indexnow.org/indexnow	Forwards your submission to every participant
Google	Not participating	None	Said in 2021 it would test the protocol, still absent

Does Google use IndexNow?

No. In November 2021 a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land, “We’re encouraged by work to make web crawling more efficient, and we will be testing the potential benefits of this protocol.” Nearly 5 years later Google is still absent from the participant list published at indexnow.org.

So treat IndexNow as a Bing-and-friends channel. For Google, your discovery levers stay what they always were: XML sitemaps with accurate lastmod values, clean internal linking, and the Google Search Console URL inspection tool for one-off requests.

Push vs Pull: What the IndexNow Protocol Changed

Pull means the crawler decides when to visit. Push means you decide when to tell it. IndexNow does not replace crawling, it reorders the queue, so URLs you know have changed get looked at first.

Microsoft framed it at launch as “an initiative for a more efficient Internet”, where telling engines that a URL changed gives “a clear signal helping search engines to prioritize crawl for these URLs, thereby limiting the need for exploratory crawl”. The same post said engines “intend to limit crawling of websites adopting IndexNow”.

The server-side effect is real. Fewer speculative crawls means less bandwidth spent on pages that have not moved, which matters most for large catalogues where crawl budget is the binding constraint.

Adoption backs the design. Microsoft’s December 2024 update reported over 3.5 billion URLs submitted per day and said 18% of all new URLs clicked in web search results came through the protocol, with GoDaddy, the Internet Archive and Condé Nast among the named adopters.

How to Set Up the IndexNow Protocol on Your Site

Most sites never touch the API. Check your CMS, host or SEO plugin first, because IndexNow integration already ships with WordPress, Shopify, Wix, GoDaddy, Duda, Joomla, Drupal and others. If your platform is not on that list, a key file and one HTTP request will do the job.

Option 1: your CMS or SEO plugin

The Bing Webmaster team publishes a free IndexNow plugin for WordPress with more than 100,000 active installations. It submits new, updated and deleted pages to the generic endpoint at api.indexnow.org, which shares them with every participant. No key file to manage.

Option 2: your CDN

Cloudflare offers native IndexNow integration, so submissions fire at the edge with nothing installed on your origin server. That is the lowest-effort route for teams already behind a CDN.

Option 3: the API directly

If you are on a custom stack, the IndexNow documentation sets out the whole contract. Generate and host the key file, then submit a single URL with a GET request, or batch up to 10,000 URLs in a JSON POST containing host, key and urlList.

Log the response code on every call. A 200 means the URL was received, 202 means your key is still being verified, 400 means a malformed URL or key, 422 means the URLs do not belong to the host, and 429 means you are being rate limited.

IndexNow Best Practices Worth Following

Submit meaningful changes, not every save. The protocol rewards restraint, because every submission draws on the same crawl quota that your unsubmitted pages compete for.

Wait at least 5 minutes before resubmitting the same URL, and skip cosmetic or layout-only edits entirely.
Submit deletions and redirects too. Pages returning 404, 410 or a 301 keep indexes accurate.
Keep your XML sitemap. IndexNow covers what just changed, sitemaps cover your full inventory and deeper pages.
Do not backfill. The protocol is for changes made after you set it up, not for a retroactive dump of old edits.
Log every submission with a timestamp, the URL and the HTTP response code so failures surface early.
Fix the blockers first. A page disallowed in robots.txt will not rank faster because you pushed it.

Is IndexNow Worth It in 2026?

Yes, for almost every site, because the cost is close to zero. If your CMS or CDN already supports it, switching it on is a checkbox. The upside is faster discovery on Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep, plus cleaner signals about which pages matter.

The caveat is scale of benefit. A brochure site that publishes twice a year will barely notice. A publisher or ecommerce catalogue with daily price and stock changes will. Update frequency decides the payoff, not site size.

Faster indexation only helps if the pushed pages are worth crawling, so clear the common technical SEO issues found in a technical SEO audit first.

IndexNow Protocol FAQs

What is the IndexNow protocol?

IndexNow is an open protocol that lets a website notify participating search engines the moment a URL is added, updated or deleted. You host a key file to prove ownership, then send the changed URL to an IndexNow endpoint. The receiving engine verifies your key and shares the submission with every other participant, so a single call reaches all of them.

Does Google use IndexNow?

No. In November 2021 a Google spokesperson said Google was “encouraged by work to make web crawling more efficient” and would be testing the protocol. Google never joined, and it is still absent from the participant list at indexnow.org in September 2026. For Google, rely on XML sitemaps with accurate lastmod values and Search Console URL inspection.

Which search engines support IndexNow?

Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep all run IndexNow endpoints, and Amazon and the Internet Archive are listed as participants on indexnow.org too. Google is not. You only need to submit to 1 endpoint, or to the global endpoint at api.indexnow.org, because submissions are shared across every IndexNow-enabled service.

How many URLs can I submit to IndexNow at once?

IndexNow supports bulk submission of up to 10,000 URLs per POST request, and you can mix http and https URLs in the same payload. Going over that limit risks a failed request or an HTTP 422 response, so split larger batches. For a single URL, a simple GET request with the URL and your key is enough.

I submitted a URL but it is not indexed. Why?

Submission is a notification, not a guarantee. The engine still decides whether to crawl, based on its crawl quota, scheduling logic and quality signals, and the official FAQ states that submitting a URL does not guarantee immediate indexing. If a page stays out of the index, the cause is usually quality, duplication or a crawl block.

Can I submit the same URL several times a day?

Avoid it unless the content genuinely changed. IndexNow guidance is to wait at least 5 minutes between updates before resubmitting the same URL, and to reserve submissions for substantial changes to content or structure. Pages that update constantly, such as live scores or weather, are poor candidates because the submissions burn crawl quota without improving visibility.

Do I still need an XML sitemap if I use IndexNow?

Yes. The 2 do different jobs. IndexNow tells search engines what changed right now, while an XML sitemap gives them a complete inventory of every URL, including pages that change rarely or sit deep in the structure. Use both: fast discovery for fresh content, thorough coverage for everything else.

Your Next Move: Make Indexing Predictable

The IndexNow protocol fixes discovery speed, not discovery worthiness. Switch it on through your CMS, CDN or the API, then point the saved crawl budget at pages that deserve it.

Want a second opinion on why your pages are slow to index? Book a strategy call with upGrowth and bring your sitemap plus your last 3 months of coverage reports. We will tell you whether push indexing is your bottleneck or a distraction.

For Curious Minds

The delay you are experiencing stems from the traditional 'pull' method of content discovery. In this model, search engines must proactively send crawlers to your site to check for updates, a process that does not happen daily for every URL, leading to significant indexing lag. The core of this is search engine indexing, which is how platforms like Microsoft Bing organize information into a reverse index to provide fast answers to queries. Without it, they would have to sift through sites in real-time. The traditional 'pull' system involves search bots visiting sites on a schedule they determine, requesting pages, and analyzing them. This creates a bottleneck because crawlers cannot scan every page on the internet constantly. This resource-intensive process means your latest improvements and critical updates are not immediately visible, impacting your ability to attract consumers and sales. Understanding this foundation reveals why new protocols are necessary for a more dynamic web. For a deeper look at optimizing this process, explore the full guide.

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About the Author

Amol Ghemud

Optimizer in Chief

Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.

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