What it is.
IndexNow is a free, open-source protocol. You generate a key, host it as a text file at your domain root, then send a simple HTTP request with the changed URL whenever you publish.
One call reaches every participating search engine, so you notify once instead of per engine. It covers adding, updating, and deleting content, which is the part people forget: a removed page keeps showing in results until something tells the engine it's gone.
This matters more since AI answers started favoring recent sources. A page nobody has crawled cannot be cited.
What you get.
- Discovery in minutes on a new page instead of whenever a crawler returns.
- One request that reaches multiple participating search engines.
- A way to signal deletions, so removed pages leave the index faster.
- A protocol simple enough to fire from a CMS hook or a publish step in CI.
How to set it up.
Generate an API key and host it as a text file at the root of your domain, so the engine can verify you own the site.
Send a GET or POST with the changed URL to the IndexNow endpoint, which is one HTTP call.
Hook it into your CMS publish event, so nobody has to remember to run it.
Submit on delete as well as on publish, since that is what pulls a dead page out of results.
Batch URLs when you push a large update, and keep inside the published request limits.
Confirm submissions in Bing Webmaster Tools before you assume it's working.
Use cases
New page discovered in minutes
Call the protocol from your CMS the moment a page publishes.
One request, several engines
Notify the participating engines without a separate integration each.
Stop waiting on a crawl
Push the URL instead of hoping a crawler returns this week.
Best for
Sites publishing often
News, jobs, listings, and programmatic pages all lose value while they wait to be crawled.
Programmatic SEO
Pushing thousands of generated pages is faster than waiting for a crawl budget to reach them.
Removing pages cleanly
A deleted page that still ranks generates support tickets, and this clears it.