IndexNow

IndexNow is a simple open protocol for telling search engines that a URL has changed. Instead of waiting for a crawler to rediscover the page, you send a ping with the URL and a verification key, and the search engine can prioritise crawling it. Microsoft Bing and Yandex launched it in October 2021; participating engines share submitted URLs with each other, so one notification reaches them all.

How it works

• Generate a key: a string of 8 to 128 characters (letters, numbers and dashes).
• Host the key: place a text file named after the key, containing the key, at the root of your site, to prove ownership.
• Submit: send a GET request for a single URL, or a JSON POST with up to 10,000 URLs, to api.indexnow.org/indexnow or any participating engine’s endpoint.
• Read the response: 200 or 202 means received; 403 means the key is not valid; 422 means URLs do not belong to the host; 429 means too many requests.

As of MLforSEO’s October 2026 update, participants include Bing, Yandex, Seznam.cz, Naver and Yep, and the Internet Archive and Amazonbot receive notifications. Google does not participate. Many CMS plugins, CDNs and SEO tools can submit automatically.

How it’s used in SEO and marketing

• Getting new and updated pages, such as price changes or stock updates, reflected faster in Bing and the products built on it.
• Notifying engines of deleted pages so they drop out sooner.
• Bulk-submitting URLs after a migration or large content refresh with a Python script.
• Reducing unnecessary crawling for large or frequently changing sites.

Example

The MLforSEO guide includes a Python script that generates a key, writes the key file, batches a URL list into requests, checks the key before sending and reports the response codes. Indexation in Google, which does not use IndexNow, is then checked separately with the Search Console URL Inspection API.

Limitations and things to watch

• A submission is a hint. It does not guarantee crawling, indexing or ranking.
• Only submit URLs that actually changed; repeatedly pinging unchanged URLs wastes the signal.
• It does not help with Google; keep XML sitemaps and Search Console for that.
• Keep the key file reachable, or every submission will fail with a 403.

Learn it on MLforSEO

• The Ultimate Guide to the IndexNow API: Instant Indexing for Bing, Yandex and Other Search Engines (with Python)
• Structured Data Automation with Python: Detect, Generate and Validate JSON-LD at Scale