IndexNow explained: what it does and what it does not do

IndexNow is a way for a website to tell search engines that a page has been added, changed or deleted, so they can recrawl it sooner. It is a notification. It does not index the page, it does not influence ranking, and Google does not take part in it. It is cheap to set up and useful for Bing, which is why we run it on all our sites. Here is what it does and does not do, and what we saw when we used it alongside Google and Bing submissions.

How it works

You create a key, which is a short string. You host it as a plain text file on your own domain, which proves you control the site. When pages change, you send one request to an IndexNow endpoint with the host, the key, the key file's address and a list of URLs. Up to 10,000 URLs fit in a single request. Participating engines share the notification between them.

A good response is a 200 or 202. That means the notification was accepted, not that anything was indexed. One quirk we hit: a key file deployed minutes earlier can return a verification error until the engine has fetched it. Deploy the key file first, wait a minute, and retry.

What it does

• It tells Bing and other participating engines about a change without waiting for them to find it.
• It covers deletions as well as new pages.
• It is free and needs no account.

What it does not do

• It does not reach Google. Google has its own routes: a sitemap in Search Console, and normal crawling. We cover what trips that up in sitemap dates and new posts not being recrawled.
• It does not guarantee indexing. An engine can accept the notification and decline to index a thin or duplicate page.
• It does not improve rankings. It is about discovery speed only.
• It does not backfill by itself. IndexNow only knows about URLs you send. Turning it on does nothing for the hundreds of pages already on your site.

Our experience: three submissions, not one

After a deploy with new pages, we make three separate submissions:

1. the sitemap in Google Search Console, which also forces a refetch,
2. a ping to IndexNow,
3. a batch of URLs through Bing Webmaster Tools.

The reason for the third is that a Bing Webmaster submission does not, as far as we could tell, fan out to the other IndexNow engines. The two routes are separate. Sending only one leaves a gap. Bing's own submission also has a daily quota, which is 100 a day on pagecog.com.au. We describe that in our Bing Webmaster Tools setup. IndexNow had no such limit that we ran into at our volumes.

The worked example is the backfill. Eleven of our sites share one key, hosted at each site's root. The first time we added the key, we walked every site's sitemap and sent all the URLs in one request per site. On the first run that was 493 URLs across nine sites, and all were accepted. Without that step, only pages edited after the key was added would ever have been announced.

Being honest about outcomes: we can confirm the notifications were accepted. We cannot say how much faster any page was indexed because of them. We have no clean control, since the same pages were also submitted to Bing directly. Treat IndexNow as a low-cost habit, not a measured boost.

Do you need it?

If you run a small site that changes a few times a month, probably not as a manual job. Bing will find your pages through the sitemap. Many platforms already ping IndexNow for you, so check before adding anything. If you publish often, or you rebuild a site and want old URLs rechecked, it is worth having. A rebuild is exactly when it matters, and we have a note on what happens to rankings when you redesign.

How to check it is wired up correctly

Three quick checks catch most problems. Open the key file's address in a browser and confirm it returns only the key, with no extra markup. Confirm the key file is on the same host as the URLs you are sending, because a key on example.com does not cover www.example.com. Then send a single test URL and look for the 200 or 202 response. If you get a 403, the engine could not fetch your key file yet, which is usually timing, or a redirect in front of the file.

Also keep in mind that the key sits in a public file, which is by design. It proves you control the site. It is not a password, so do not worry that it is visible, but do not reuse it as a secret for anything else.

Deleted and moved pages

IndexNow also accepts URLs for pages you removed. If you delete a page or redirect it, notifying the engines helps them drop the old address sooner. We did this after deleting some old posts and redirecting them, which we describe in we deleted eight blog posts and redirected them. The notification does not replace the redirect itself, which must still be in place.

Where it fits for AI answers

Bing's index is reported to feed some AI assistants, so getting pages into it faster is the one link between IndexNow and ChatGPT search. That link is reported, not verified by us. Our plain summary is in how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and other AI answers.

If you would like this handled as part of your site, our SEO service includes the submission routine, with prices on the pricing page. To discuss a site, go to get started. Related: llms.txt, what we know and do not know.