IndexNow is an open protocol for instantly notifying search engines of URL changes, supported by Bing, Yandex, Seznam, and Naver.
Announced by Microsoft and Yandex in 2021, IndexNow lets a site owner POST a list of changed URLs to a participating search engine's API endpoint. The engine prioritizes those URLs for crawling, typically within minutes rather than days. The protocol uses a key-file ownership check (a 32+ character key hosted at /{key}.txt) for authentication.
A single POST can submit up to 10,000 URLs. Common ecommerce implementation: enqueue URLs on every catalog mutation (product create, update, slug change, archive); drain the queue via a background job every 1–5 minutes; log each ping for audit.
Google does not participate in IndexNow. For Google, sites rely on regular crawl cycles or the Indexing API (limited to a few content types). For all other major non-Chinese search engines, IndexNow is the fastest way to signal updates.