What is IndexNow, and which search engines use it?

· Edited by Chris Dolan

IndexNow is a protocol that lets a website tell search engines that an address has been added, changed or deleted, so they do not have to discover the change by crawling. It was created by Microsoft Bing and Yandex in 2021. Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep take part, and Google is not a listed participant. Every statement below was checked against the protocol's own pages and the engines' own documentation on 9 October 2026.

The practical point is this: IndexNow reaches the engines that have joined it and no others. A notice sent through it reaches Bing. It does not reach Google.

What IndexNow is

Search engines normally find changes by revisiting pages and comparing. IndexNow reverses the direction: the site sends a short notice naming the address that changed, and the engine decides what to do with it. Bing's announcement of 18 October 2021 introduced it in these words: “IndexNow is a new protocol created by Microsoft Bing and Yandex”.

The IndexNow FAQ sums up what one notice does: “Submitting a URL through IndexNow alerts all participating search engines that content has changed”. A notice is an alert about an address. It carries no content, and it is not a request the engine has to grant. The address can be one that was added, updated or deleted, so the protocol also covers pages that have been taken down.

How a submission works

The protocol documentation sets out three parts.

  1. A key. The site chooses a key of 8 to 128 characters, made of letters, numbers and dashes.
  2. A key file. The site publishes a text file containing the key, which proves that whoever sends the notices controls the site. The documentation strongly recommends placing it at the root of the site. A key file can be kept elsewhere on the same host, but its location then has to be given in every notice.
  3. The notice. One address is sent as a simple web request that includes the address and the key. Up to 10,000 addresses can be sent together in a single post.

A response code of 200 means only that the engine received the notice. A 202 means it was received and the key has not been checked yet. A 403 means the key was not found or did not match the file, and a 429 means too many requests were sent.

Which search engines take part

The answer depends on which of the protocol's own pages you read, because the list has grown.

  • The IndexNow home page says the protocol “has support from Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex, Yep.”
  • The FAQ lists a submission address for each of those five, and one for Amazon as well.
  • The machine-readable list of participants has seven entries: Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver, Yep, the Internet Archive and Amazon's crawler.

You do not have to notify each one. Engines that adopt the protocol, the documentation says, “agree that submitted URLs will be automatically shared with all other participating search engines”. One notice to any participant reaches them all. The documentation also sets a condition for joining: an engine must have a noticeable presence in at least one market.

Does Google support IndexNow?

Google is not on any of the three lists above, and it has not announced support. The only statement from Google found for this article is an old one. On 9 November 2021 Search Engine Journal quoted a Google spokesperson as saying: “we will be testing the potential benefits of this protocol”. No later statement from Google about that test was found.

What Google does offer is described in its own guide to asking for a recrawl, last updated on 10 December 2025. It names two routes, inspecting a single address in Search Console and, for more: “If you have large numbers of URLs, submit a sitemap.” IndexNow is not mentioned on that page. Our guide to setting up Search Console covers submitting a sitemap.

What IndexNow does not promise

A notice asks for attention. It does not secure a place in the index. Yandex's help page on IndexNow says so plainly: “This method doesn't guarantee that the sent pages will be indexed.” The IndexNow FAQ says the same of timing: after a notice arrives, the engine weighs it against its own crawl quota, scheduling and quality signals before deciding whether to fetch the page.

The FAQ also sets limits on how the protocol should be used.

  • Send real changes only. It advises against submitting the same address many times a day, and suggests waiting at least five minutes between notices for a page that changes often.
  • Do not send the past. The protocol is for changes made after it was set up. It is not meant for resubmitting a site's older pages.

Whether to switch it on, and why sitemaps still matter

For a site that wants its changes seen promptly by Bing and the other participants, IndexNow is a small job done once: a key, a file and a notice whenever a page changes. Check first whether your publishing platform already sends the notices for you.

It does not replace a sitemap. The FAQ itself recommends using both: IndexNow for what changes from now on, and a sitemap with accurate lastmod dates for everything that changed before. A sitemap is also the route that reaches Google. And a notice only helps a page that an engine is able to fetch and read. The technical accessibility section of our audit checklist covers what can stand in the way.

Sources

All eight were read on 9 October 2026.

  1. The announcement of IndexNow, Bing Webmaster Blog, 18 October 2021.
  2. FAQ, IndexNow.org.
  3. Documentation, IndexNow.org.
  4. Home, IndexNow.org.
  5. searchengines.json, IndexNow.org's list of participants.
  6. Google Will Be Testing IndexNow, Search Engine Journal, 9 November 2021.
  7. Ask Google to Recrawl Your Website, Google Search Central, last updated 10 December 2025.
  8. IndexNow protocol support, Yandex Webmaster Help.