What IndexNow does
IndexNow is a protocol for telling search engines that a URL was added, changed or deleted. You send one request and the participating engines share it. Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver, Yep, the Internet Archive and Amazonbot take part. Google does not, so for Google you still rely on your sitemap and normal crawling. There is no account or sign-up: the only proof of ownership is a key file on your site.
Set it up
- Create a key. Any string of letters, digits and dashes between 8 and 128 characters works. A random hex string is the usual choice, for example
a1b2c3d4e5f6a7b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5d6. - Host the key file. Create a text file named after the key, such as
a1b2c3d4e5f6a7b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5d6.txt, containing only the key and nothing else. Publish it in your site's root so it opens athttps://example.com/a1b2c3d4e5f6a7b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5d6.txt. - Submit URLs. Send the changed URLs together with the key. A single URL is one request:
https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://example.com/new-page&key=a1b2c3d4e5f6a7b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5d6 - Check the response. A 200 or 202 means the engine accepted the submission. An error usually means the key file cannot be reached at the expected address.
Submit from your assistant
With mowteng connected, the indexnow_submit tool tells every IndexNow engine about your added or changed URLs in one call. It is a write action, so your assistant should ask before sending. The key file must already be live on your site; mowteng does not create it for you.
I published /blog/new-post and updated /pricing on example.com. Tell all IndexNow engines about both URLs.
What to submit, and what not to
- Submit URLs that were added, changed or removed. Do not resend your whole site on a schedule.
- Submit the canonical URL you want crawled, not tracking variants.
- A submission is a hint. It tells engines to look, not that the page will be indexed.
IndexNow and Bing's own URL submission overlap. If you only care about Bing and Yandex, either route works; ask Google, Bing and Yandex to crawl a page compares them. The IndexNow page describes the tool in more detail.