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IndexNow: push new and changed URLs to Bing and partner engines

IndexNow is a protocol that lets you notify search engines the moment a URL is added, changed or deleted, instead of waiting for a crawl. One submission is shared with every participating engine: Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver, Yep, Internet Archive and Amazonbot. Google does not participate, so keep your sitemap for Google.

The rule: Ping IndexNow when URLs are added, changed or deleted, for Bing and partner engines

Impact Evidence Applies to Last checked
Medium Official guidance Bing, ChatGPT Oct 30, 2026

Why it matters

IndexNow lets you push changed URLs instead of waiting for a crawl, and a submission is shared with every participating engine. Participants are Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver, Yep, Internet Archive and Amazonbot. Google is not a participant. Faster Bing indexing matters for AI because Copilot grounds on Bing.

How to do it

  1. Generate a key and host it as {key}.txt at the site root
  2. POST changed URLs (up to 10,000 per request) to an IndexNow endpoint on publish, update and delete
  3. Treat a 200 response as received, not indexed
  4. Keep using sitemaps for Google

Example

IndexNow POST request
POST /indexnow HTTP/1.1
Host: www.bing.com
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8

{
  "host": "www.example.com",
  "key": "<your-key>",
  "urlList": [
    "https://www.example.com/new-page",
    "https://www.example.com/updated-page"
  ]
}

Questions

Does Google support IndexNow?

No. Google is not on the IndexNow list of participating search engines. Pinging IndexNow does nothing for Google, so keep submitting an XML sitemap and let Googlebot crawl as usual.

How do I set up IndexNow?

Generate a key of 8 to 128 characters and host it as a UTF-8 text file named {key}.txt at the root of your host, containing the key. Then POST changed URLs, up to 10,000 per request, to an IndexNow endpoint whenever you publish, update or delete a page. For a single URL you can use a GET request: /indexnow?url=<url-encoded URL>&key=<your-key>.

What do IndexNow response codes mean?

200 means the submission was received, not that the URL is indexed. 202 means it was accepted and key validation is pending. 403 means the key is invalid or the key file was not found, 422 means the URLs do not belong to the host or the key does not match, and 429 means you are submitting too often.

Does IndexNow help with AI search?

Indirectly, through Bing. Microsoft Copilot grounds its answers on Bing, so getting a changed page into Bing faster gets the fresh version in front of Copilot sooner.

Sources

Change history

Date Change What changed
Oct 30, 2026 Added Added to the rulebook.

Checked against its sources every Monday. Only content changes are listed.

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