{"id":14736,"date":"2026-02-19T22:34:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T17:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.huntbee.com\/resources\/docs\/seo-xml-sitemap-generator-pro\/what-is-indexnow-a-complete-guide\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T13:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T08:03:08","slug":"what-is-indexnow-a-complete-guide","status":"publish","type":"docs","link":"https:\/\/www.huntbee.com\/resources\/docs\/seo-xml-sitemap-generator-pro\/what-is-indexnow-a-complete-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"What is IndexNow? A Complete Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>IndexNow is an open protocol developed by Microsoft (Bing) and Yandex that allows website owners to instantly notify participating search engines when content is added, updated, or deleted. Instead of waiting days or weeks for a search engine&#8217;s crawler to discover changes, IndexNow delivers that information in near-real-time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Problem IndexNow Solves<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Traditional web crawling is reactive: search engines discover changes by periodically crawling your site on their own schedule. For e-commerce stores, this means:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>New products may take <strong>days<\/strong> to be indexed<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Price updates and stock changes are reflected <strong>slowly<\/strong> in search results<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Deleted pages may continue appearing in search results for extended periods<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Crawl budget is wasted on unchanged pages<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>IndexNow inverts this model. <strong>Your server tells the search engine what changed, when it changed, and what the URL is \u2014 right when the change happens.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How IndexNow Works \u2014 Step by Step<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Verification:<\/strong> You generate an API key and place it as a text file at your domain root (e.g., <code>yourstore.com\/{key}.txt<\/code>). This proves you own the domain. <em>This extension handles this automatically during the first cron run.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Queue:<\/strong> When you add, edit, or delete a product in OpenCart, the event hooks in this extension add the URL to a queue in the database.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Submit:<\/strong> A scheduled cron job picks up queued URLs (up to 100 at a time), groups them by store and language, and sends a batch API request to the IndexNow endpoint.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Propagation:<\/strong> The receiving search engine (typically Bing) processes the notification and shares it with other IndexNow participants. They re-crawl or update their index accordingly.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who Uses IndexNow?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><thead><tr><th>Search Engine \/ Platform<\/th><th>Notes<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Bing \/ Microsoft Search<\/strong><\/td><td>Primary IndexNow endpoint. Co-founder of the protocol. Most mature implementation.<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>Yandex<\/strong><\/td><td>Russia&#8217;s dominant search engine. Full IndexNow support.<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>Naver<\/strong><\/td><td>South Korea&#8217;s most popular search engine. IndexNow supported.<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>Seznam.cz<\/strong><\/td><td>Czech search engine with IndexNow support.<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>DuckDuckGo<\/strong><\/td><td>Uses Bing as a data source; benefits indirectly from submissions to Bing.<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>Google<\/strong><\/td><td>Not yet an official participant (as of early 2026). Uses its own crawl scheduling and GSC for URL submissions.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will Google Adopt IndexNow?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a common question. Google has not joined IndexNow as of early 2026, but has made public statements acknowledging the protocol and has not ruled out future participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Reasons often cited for Google&#8217;s hesitation:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Scale<\/strong> \u2014 Google indexes hundreds of billions of pages; a push-based system at that scale presents different infrastructure challenges than Bing faces<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Spam risk<\/strong> \u2014 Any open protocol can be abused by spammers submitting low-quality pages<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Control<\/strong> \u2014 Crawling on its own schedule gives Google more control over quality signals<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Why adoption is still likely eventually:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The protocol is open source and has broad industry support<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Google has participated in standards discussions at the W3C\/Web Standards community<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The direction of the web is toward real-time data<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Many SEOs believe adoption is a question of <em>when<\/em>, not <em>if<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\ud83d\udca1 <strong>Bottom line:<\/strong> Enable IndexNow today. It immediately benefits your Bing and Yandex ranking freshness, reduces crawl lag, and positions your store to benefit if and when Google adopts the protocol.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">IndexNow API Response Codes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><thead><tr><th>HTTP Code<\/th><th>Meaning<\/th><th>Action<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>200<\/strong><\/td><td>OK \u2014 URLs received and accepted<\/td><td>None. Success.<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>202<\/strong><\/td><td>Accepted \u2014 received but not yet validated<\/td><td>None. Engine will process.<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>400<\/strong><\/td><td>Bad Request \u2014 invalid format<\/td><td>Check key and URL validity<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>403<\/strong><\/td><td>Forbidden \u2014 key file not verified<\/td><td>Use Validate Key in admin<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>422<\/strong><\/td><td>Unprocessable \u2014 invalid hostnames in URLs<\/td><td>Ensure URLs belong to your verified domain<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>429<\/strong><\/td><td>Too Many Requests \u2014 rate limited<\/td><td>Reduce cron frequency; extension retries automatically<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">IndexNow vs. XML Sitemap \u2014 What&#8217;s the Difference?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><thead><tr><th><\/th><th>XML Sitemap<\/th><th>IndexNow<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>How it works<\/strong><\/td><td>Passive \u2014 crawlers discover and check on their own schedule<\/td><td>Active \u2014 you push notifications when changes happen<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>Speed<\/strong><\/td><td>Changes indexed in days to weeks<\/td><td>Changes notified in minutes<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>Coverage<\/strong><\/td><td>Every URL in your catalog<\/td><td>Only URLs that recently changed<\/td><\/tr><tr><td><strong>Best for<\/strong><\/td><td>New sites, full catalog discovery<\/td><td>Keeping indexed content fresh and up to date<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Use both.<\/strong> They serve complementary purposes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":245,"menu_order":11,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","doc_tag":[],"class_list":["post-14736","docs","type-docs","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What is IndexNow? 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