Draft:IndexNow

• Comment: Topic simply isn't notable. I did a check and found the only sources that could potentially be used are the SEO blogs which are already in the draft. These would not work to establish notability. CNMall41 (talk) 23:39, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: Wikipedia is not a "how to". Theroadislong (talk) 15:56, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: The IndexNow website is a primary source and blog sites (such as blogs.bing.com) are not acceptable or reliable sources either. Dan arndt (talk) 06:11, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

---

IndexNow

IndexNow. is an open-source protocol allowing website to instantly inform participating search engines about the latest changes on their website.

At its core IndexNow is a simple ping notifying search engines whenever their website content is created, updated, or deleted to help search engines to quickly crawl and reflect these changes in their search results.

IndexNow is open to all participating search engines having a noticeable presence in at least one market. The protocol requires Search engines to share all submitted key-validated URLs with all other IndexNow search engines.

By reducing redundant crawls, IndexNow aims to improve overall internet efficiency.

History

Microsoft, Yandex announced IndexNow in Oct 2021. Created by Microsoft Bing and Yandex as an open source protocol allowing all search engines with a significant presence in at least one market to participate.

CloudFlare announced IndexNow Support in Oct 2021.

Duda Content Management System enabled IndexNow for all sites in Nov 2021

IndexNow sharing between search engines began in Jan 2022

Seznam.cz was the third search engine joining IndexNow in March 2022

During spring 2022, major SEO plugins as Yoast SEO, AIOSEO, Rank Math, SEOPress started to support IndexNow.

Microsoft announced in August 2022 than more than 16 million web sites are publishing over 1.2 billion URLs per day to the IndexNow API. In August 2022 IndexNow attributed to 7% of all new URLs clicked in their search results.

Naver was the fourth search engine joining IndexNow in July 2023

How it works?

Typically search engines follow a pull model and use their crawlers to pull content from the web. This involves crawlers visiting a website and gathering the data from the webpage. This can take from a few days to weeks for search engines to discover the latest content.

With IndexNow this model moves towards a push model allowing websites to easily notify search engines whenever their website content is created, updated, or deleted.

IndexNow ensures that all search engines adopting the protocol agree that all submitted URLs will be shared automatically with all the participating search engines.

The sharing of these URLs with all other search engines ensures efficiency gains for all the publishers as well as the search engines.

Benefits

1. Faster Content Indexing leading to more up-to-date content being displayed in search results.
2. Updating multiple search engines with a single call.
3. Minimize exploratory crawling for detecting changes in content and new URLs.
4. Allows to communicate non http 200 status code pages (dead links, redirect) as well unlike XML sitemaps.
5. Reduces infra costs and crawl carbon footprint for search engines as well as websites.

How to use?

With a single HTTP request, websites can inform search engines about any changes made to an URL or a set of URLs, whether they have been added, updated, or deleted.

For one URL:

https://<searchengine>/indexnow?url=url-changed&key=your-key

For a set of URLs:

POST /indexnow HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Host: <searchengine>
{
  "host": "www.example.com",
  "key": "c0bc5d372dee4fd5b6cc80db430b007a",
  "urlList": [
      "https://www.example.com/url1",
      "https://www.example.com/folder/url2",
      "https://www.example.com/url3"
      ]
}

The key, UTF=8 text file, is managed and hosted by the web site at the root of their host.

The search engine endpoints are listed on the protocol site.

References

1. https://searchengineland.com/indexnow-new-initiative-by-microsoft-and-yandex-to-push-content-to-search-engines-375247
2. https://searchengineland.com/google-is-testing-the-indexnow-protocol-for-sustainability-375932
3. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/indexnow/423791/
4. https://yoast.com/what-is-indexnow/
5. https://ziptie.dev/indexnow/
6. https://www.kinexmedia.com/blog/google-decides-to-give-indexnow-protocol-a-try/