What is IndexNow?

One submission reaches every participant: engines that receive IndexNow URLs automatically share them with the others, so you don’t need to notify each one. Besides the engines above, the current list includes the Internet Archive and Amazonbot. Microsoft Bing and Yandex launched the protocol in October 2021. A submission invites a crawl; it does not guarantee indexing.

Why does it matter in 2026?

Microsoft says Copilot grounds its web answers by sending generated search queries to Bing, and since February 2026 Bing Webmaster Tools has reported how often your pages are cited in AI answers (Bing AI Performance). Bing’s announcement of that report put it directly: “By enabling faster discovery of content changes, IndexNow helps ensure that AI systems reference the most current version of a page when generating answers.” That matters most for pages that change often — prices, stock, timings, vacancies.

Google said in November 2021 that it would test the protocol, but it is not a participant. For Google, an accurate XML sitemap remains the main route.

How does it work?

1. Create a key of 8–128 characters, using letters, numbers and dashes.

2. Host it at https://www.example.com/<key>.txt as a UTF-8 text file containing the key. You can host it elsewhere and point to it with keyLocation, but a key file inside a folder only validates URLs under that folder.

3. Submit one URL with a simple GET request, or up to 10,000 URLs in one POST to https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow:

   POST /indexnow HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.indexnow.org
   Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
   
   {
     "host": "www.example.com",
     "key": "4f8a1c2e9b7d4e6f",
     "urlList": [
       "https://www.example.com/products/ceiling-fan-1200mm",
       "https://www.example.com/offers"
     ]
   }

4. Read the response. 200 means the URLs were received; 202 means received while the key is still being validated; 400 means a malformed request; 403 means the key file wasn’t found or doesn’t contain the key; 422 means the URLs don’t belong to the host or the key doesn’t match; 429 means too many requests.

How to get it right

1. Automate it. Microsoft’s IndexNow plugin covers WordPress, and Cloudflare’s Crawler Hints can send IndexNow signals when content changes. On a custom site, call the API from your publish or deploy step.
2. Send real changes only — new, updated or deleted URLs. The IndexNow FAQ advises against resubmitting the same URL many times a day, and the protocol is not meant for back-filling old changes.
3. Submit canonical URLs, not parameter variants or redirected addresses (canonical URL).
4. Keep your sitemap honest. Bing recommends using sitemaps and IndexNow together, and Google uses lastmod only when it is “consistently and verifiably” accurate.
5. Check it worked in Bing Webmaster Tools, and log the response codes.

Common mistakes

• Expecting faster Google indexing. Google doesn’t participate, and its Indexing API is no substitute: it only supports pages with JobPosting or livestream (BroadcastEvent) structured data.
• Pinging everything daily. Resubmitting unchanged URLs in bulk wastes effort and invites 429 responses.
• Broken key files. A key file that is missing, blocked or doesn’t match the key in your request fails validation.
• Treating a 200 as indexed. It means received, not crawled or indexed.

In practice: a Vadodara electronics store

A Vadodara electronics store whose prices and stock change daily can have its store software send an IndexNow ping whenever a product page changes, so Bing hears about it straight away. An accurate sitemap lastmod carries the same changes to Google.