Why it matters for your business
Normally, search engines discover changes on your site when they next crawl it, which can take time. With IndexNow, your site sends a quick notification instead, so participating search engines can pick up new and updated pages much sooner.
IndexNow is supported by Bing and several other search engines, including Yandex, Seznam, Naver and Yep. Bing’s index also powers other products, including Microsoft Copilot. Google doesn’t use IndexNow, so for Google you still rely on your sitemap and Google Search Console.
Example
You publish a new page about your holiday opening hours. Your website sends an IndexNow ping with the page address, and Bing learns about it within minutes instead of days.
How to check or improve it
- Check whether your website platform or a plugin supports IndexNow; many do.
- IndexNow works with a simple key file on your site that proves the notifications come from you.
- Only send pages that were actually added, changed or removed.
- Keep submitting your sitemap in Google Search Console for Google.