Guide

IndexNow explained: setup, limits, and who honours it

What IndexNow does, which search engines actually honour it, how to set up the key file, and how it relates to a sitemap.

By Sunny Patel · Updated 2026-09-20

IndexNow is a protocol that lets a site push a notification to a search engine the moment a page is published, updated, or removed, instead of waiting for that engine's crawler to discover the change on its own schedule. A site submits one or more URLs to any participating endpoint, and every other participating engine on the shared protocol receives the same submission without needing a separate request to each one.

The protocol was launched jointly by Microsoft and Yandex in 2021 as an open standard any search engine can adopt. It solves a narrower problem than a full crawl: it tells a participating engine that a specific URL is worth a fresh look right now. It does not replace the ordinary crawl process that discovers new sections of a site in the first place.

Who actually honours it

Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Seznam.cz, and Naver are the publicly documented participants in IndexNow. A submission to any one of their endpoints is shared across the others on the same protocol, so a single request can reach all four.

Google does not use IndexNow. Google tested the protocol in 2021 but does not currently participate, relying instead on its own crawling process and sitemap submission, and that stays true regardless of how quickly IndexNow-participating engines pick up the same URL. A site that only cares about Google ranking gets no measurable benefit from setting IndexNow up, beyond the normal benefit of a sitemap and a clean internal link graph that Google's own crawler still needs regardless of any push protocol.

Key file setup

Every site using IndexNow generates a key, a random string usually 8 to 128 characters long, and publishes it in a text file at the domain root named after the key itself, for example https://example.com/a1b2c3d4e5f6.txt, containing only that same key string as its content. The endpoint checks this file before accepting a submission, which confirms the request genuinely comes from someone who controls the domain instead of a third party submitting someone else's URLs.

https://example.com/a1b2c3d4e5f6.txt

Contents of the file:
a1b2c3d4e5f6

The key stays valid until it is changed or removed. There is no expiry to renew on a schedule. Regenerating the key and republishing the file is only needed if the old key is compromised or a site wants to rotate it as routine hygiene.

Submitting URLs

A single URL submission is a GET request naming the URL and the key, with an optional key file location. A batch submission is a POST request carrying a JSON body with the host, the key, the key file location, and a list of URLs, all of which must belong to the same host as the key file. Sites publish or update content constantly, so most real implementations trigger a submission automatically at the moment of publish instead of sending requests by hand.

POST /IndexNow HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Host: api.indexnow.org

{
  "host": "example.com",
  "key": "a1b2c3d4e5f6",
  "keyLocation": "https://example.com/a1b2c3d4e5f6.txt",
  "urlList": [
    "https://example.com/guides/new-article",
    "https://example.com/pricing"
  ]
}

WordPress and Cloudflare integration paths

On WordPress, the most common path is an SEO or caching plugin with built-in IndexNow support, which generates the key file automatically and submits a URL whenever a post publishes, updates, or gets deleted. That removes the need to write a custom hook, though the underlying mechanism is the same publish-time submission described above.

Cloudflare also offers its own IndexNow integration, and a site already running logic at the edge can instead write a Worker that sends the batch submission whenever content changes, without adding a dependency inside WordPress itself. Either path ends at the same API call. The choice comes down to which layer of the stack already has a hook into the publish event.

Limits

IndexNow accepts a single URL or a batch of multiple URLs from the same host in one request. It is meant to announce genuine changes as they happen, not to force a full recrawl of a site on demand. Participating engines can rate limit or ignore submissions that look like abuse of the protocol, such as resubmitting the same unchanged URL repeatedly. Submitting a URL does not guarantee it gets crawled or indexed immediately, or at all. It only guarantees the participating engines are notified that the URL changed.

Confirming a submission worked

A successful IndexNow request returns a 200 or 202 status code, which only confirms the endpoint accepted the submission for processing. It does not confirm the page was crawled, indexed, or ranked, and none of the participating engines publish a per-URL confirmation beyond that initial response. The practical way to check whether the notification led anywhere is the same as it always was: search for the URL directly in Bing, or watch for it in that engine's own webmaster tools once enough time has passed. Treat the API response as proof of delivery, not proof of outcome.

When it matters

IndexNow is worth setting up for any site that gets meaningful traffic from Bing, since that is the search engine most directly and publicly tied to the protocol. OpenAI's own documentation states that ChatGPT search draws on third-party search providers. It does not name Bing specifically, so treat any benefit to AI search visibility as indirect and unconfirmed: it depends on which index an engine happens to draw from, not on IndexNow itself acting as a citation mechanism. The llms.txt guide covers a different, unrelated attempt to speak directly to AI systems, and draws the same kind of honest line between what a protocol is meant to do and what is actually confirmed to happen because of it.

How it relates to sitemaps

A sitemap and IndexNow solve two different problems and both are worth keeping. A sitemap is a complete, standing list of the URLs on a site that a crawler can consult at its own pace, useful for discovery and for confirming a crawler knows a URL exists at all. IndexNow is a point-in-time push that says a specific URL changed right now, useful for getting a fast update on content that already exists in a search engine's index. Neither one replaces a real internal link graph. A URL only submitted through IndexNow, with no actual link pointing to it from elsewhere on the site, is still an orphan page by any other measure, and a search engine that later revisits the site to check on it may still fail to confirm the page's place in the site's structure.

The full site audit checks the structural fundamentals IndexNow and a sitemap both depend on: a page still needs to be reachable, fast, and free of broken links regardless of how quickly an engine is told it exists.

Frequently asked questions