What Is IndexNow?

What it is: IndexNow is a free open-source protocol that lets a website notify search engines (mainly Bing and Yandex) the moment a new page is published or an existing page changes.
Who it’s for: Site owners, SEO managers, and anyone who runs a content website.
Best if: You want Bing and Yandex to find your new posts within hours instead of waiting days for a normal crawl.
Skip if: You don’t care about Bing or Yandex traffic.

IndexNow is a simple notification protocol jointly maintained by Microsoft (Bing) and Yandex. When you publish a new page or update an existing one, your site sends a tiny HTTP request to a shared endpoint with the URL that changed. The search engines pick that up and crawl the page much faster than they would if they waited for their normal crawl cycle.

Most major WordPress, Shopify, and CMS plugins now support IndexNow. You install the plugin, paste in a small API key, and every publish event automatically sends the IndexNow ping. From there, Bing and Yandex typically index the page within hours instead of days.

Google does not support IndexNow. For Google indexing, you still rely on sitemap submission via Google Search Console or use the URL Inspection tool to request indexing one page at a time.

Why it matters

IndexNow matters because Bing has become a meaningful share of AI-search referral traffic. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude all use Bing data in their AI search results. Getting indexed on Bing fast = getting cited in AI answers fast.

For time-sensitive content (news, product launches, breaking-research posts), the difference between same-day indexing and 7-day indexing is the difference between catching the news cycle and missing it. IndexNow closes that gap on Bing.

Where you’ll see it

• In Bing Webmaster Tools settings — the “IndexNow” section where you generate an API key.
• In WordPress SEO plugins (Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO) — most include IndexNow support.
• In cloud-hosting platforms (Cloudflare, Netlify, Vercel) where IndexNow can be configured at the platform level.
• In our coverage of AI search traffic shifts.

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