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What is IndexNow?

IndexNow is an open protocol backed by Bing, Yandex, and others. Instead of waiting for search crawlers (which can take days), you push a notification the moment a URL changes. Submit once to api.indexnow.org and all participating engines are notified simultaneously. Google has not yet joined — use Search Console for Google.

🌐 Your Website
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IndexNow vs. Sitemap Submission vs. Google Search Console

Method Engines Speed Best For
IndexNow Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver, Yep Minutes New / updated pages — push notifications on publish
Google Search Console Google only Hours–days Google indexing, site health monitoring, search performance
Sitemap.xml All (via GSC or robots.txt) Days–weeks Full site coverage, initial launch, large URL batches
Internal links All Depends on crawl frequency Passive discovery — linking from already-indexed pages

How to Automate IndexNow on Your CMS

  • WordPress (Yoast SEO 19+) — Settings → Yoast SEO → Integrations → IndexNow. Enable it and Yoast submits on every publish/update automatically.
  • WordPress (Rank Math) — General Settings → IndexNow → Enable. Auto-submits on post save.
  • Shopify — Shopify uses IndexNow natively as of 2022. No setup required.
  • Wix — IndexNow is built into the Wix SEO platform and fires automatically.
  • Custom/headless sites — Call POST https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow from your deployment pipeline with the list of changed URLs.

IndexNow Rate Limits

IndexNow is generous with limits — up to 10,000 URLs per POST, and submissions are free. However, you should only submit URLs that have actually changed. Bulk-submitting your entire site repeatedly can result in temporary rate-limiting (HTTP 429) and won't speed up indexing for unchanged pages.