LLM Best Practices

IndexNow

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Overview

Ping IndexNow on every deploy that adds, changes, or removes URLs so participating engines learn about changes without waiting for the next sitemap fetch. A ping is a hint, not a guarantee; each engine still decides when to crawl. It does nothing for Google, so keep sitemaps current too; setup steps live in indexnow.

Definition

IndexNow is an open push protocol that lets sites notify participating search engines the instant a URL is created, updated, or deleted. The site holds a verification key (a hexadecimal string) hosted at a known path, then POSTs JSON or hits a single-URL GET endpoint to one participating engine, which shares the notification with the others. Bing, Yandex, Seznam, and Naver participate; Google does not. The protocol was launched in 2021 by Microsoft and Yandex.

When it applies

Use IndexNow on any site that publishes or updates frequently and wants faster discovery on participating engines. It is most useful for news, ecommerce, and high-velocity blogs.

Example

A CMS POSTs to https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow with the host, key, and a list of updated URLs after each publish. Participating engines such as Bing can then prioritize those URLs instead of waiting for the next scheduled fetch.

Citing this term

See IndexNow (llmbestpractices.com/glossary/indexnow).

  • indexnow - the deep-dive with payload format and key hosting rules.
  • crawl-budget - IndexNow reduces wasted recrawl spend.
  • technical - the technical SEO checklist that includes IndexNow.
  • canonical-url - submit canonical URLs to IndexNow, not parameterized variants.
  • llms-txt - the parallel agent-discovery file, served alongside.
  • crawl-budget

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