Adoption of IndexNow has grown from a two-engine experiment in October 2021 to a protocol that Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yep and Amazon accept, that Cloudflare, Wix, Duda, Shopify and the main WordPress SEO plugins submit to automatically, and that carried over 3.5 billion URL submissions a day by Bing’s last published count in December 2024. Google has not adopted it and has given no sign that it will. This article sets out who supports IndexNow today, the figures behind the adoption, what the protocol actually does, the practical reasons to turn it on even in Google-dominated markets, and where it fits next to sitemaps and Search Console.
What IndexNow is
IndexNow is an open protocol for telling search engines that a URL was added, changed or deleted, so they can fetch it immediately instead of waiting for a scheduled crawl. A site proves ownership once by hosting a text file containing a key, then sends a URL and that key to any participating engine. The engine receiving the submission shares it with every other IndexNow engine, so one request reaches all of them.
It was launched on 18 October 2021 by Microsoft Bing and Yandex. The protocol’s listed authors come from Microsoft, Yandex, Seznam and the Internet Archive. The idea is the push model: rather than engines crawling the web repeatedly to discover change, which costs both sides bandwidth and compute, the publisher tells them when something changed. Bing has framed it since the start as a crawl-efficiency and sustainability measure as much as a speed measure.
Which search engines have adopted IndexNow
As of October 2026, indexnow.org lists these participating engines:
- Microsoft Bing, a founder. Bing’s index also serves DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and Microsoft Copilot, so a submission to Bing reaches those surfaces too.
- Yandex, a founder, the leading engine in Russia.
- Seznam.cz, the Czech engine, whose engineers co-authored the protocol.
- Naver, the leading engine in South Korea, which joined in July 2023.
- Yep, the engine built by Ahrefs.
- Amazon, listed in the IndexNow FAQ as a participant following the May 2025 shopping announcement.
Google’s position
Google is the missing name, and it is the question every site owner asks. In November 2021 Google told the press it would be “testing the potential benefits of this protocol”. The same day John Mueller of Google wrote that he “wouldn’t assume from a limited test that this will launch broadly anytime soon” and advised sites to keep using the existing ways of telling Google about new and updated content. Five years on, nothing has changed: Google does not accept IndexNow submissions. Its only push mechanism, the Indexing API, is restricted to job postings and livestream video. For Google, discovery and recrawl still run on sitemaps, the lastmod date in them, internal links and the URL Inspection tool.
Adoption figures
Microsoft publishes the adoption data, so the figures below are Bing’s own, reported through its Webmaster Blog and the trade press:
- July 2022: 7% of new URLs clicked in Bing search results had arrived via IndexNow.
- September 2023: more than 60 million websites submitting, over 1.4 billion URLs a day.
- March 2024: 2.5 billion URLs a day; 17% of clicked URLs on Bing came from IndexNow. Bing Webmaster Tools gained an IndexNow Insights report the same month.
- December 2024: over 3.5 billion URLs a day; 18% of all new URLs clicked in Bing web results. New adopters named: GoDaddy, the Internet Archive and Condé Nast.
Two things stand out. Daily volume grew about 150% in 15 months, driven by platforms switching it on by default rather than by individual webmasters. And the share of clicked new URLs that came through IndexNow has climbed steadily, which is the figure that matters: it shows the pushed URLs are the ones users actually find. Microsoft has not published a fleet-wide figure since December 2024, so treat any larger number you see in 2026 blog posts as unverified.
Platforms, CDNs and plugins that submit automatically
Most of the volume above comes from integrations that submit without the site owner doing anything. This is where adoption has really happened.
Website builders and e-commerce
- Duda enabled IndexNow by default across roughly one million sites in 2022.
- Wix added a native integration in September 2023 that submits URL changes by default.
- GoDaddy was named as an adopter in December 2024.
- Shopify and Amazon were announced in May 2025, with an extension that lets the IndexNow payload carry Schema.org product data such as price, availability and identifiers, so Bing Shopping can update listings without a crawl.
Cloudflare Crawler Hints
Cloudflare announced Crawler Hints on the day IndexNow launched. It is available on every plan, including Free, as a single switch per zone. Cloudflare infers a content change when a cached page misses and the origin returns a new version, then notifies IndexNow. Responses with error status codes are not reported. For a site behind Cloudflare this is the lowest-effort adoption path, and it covers every URL on the zone, not just the ones a CMS plugin knows about.
WordPress
WordPress has the widest choice. Bing released its own free IndexNow plugin in January 2022. The three main SEO plugins all submit on publish and update:
- Rank Math ships IndexNow in the free version as the Instant Indexing module. You choose which post types to submit, the plugin generates and hosts the key file, and a history screen shows each submission’s response code. Posts set to noindex are not submitted. This site runs it; our key file answers at the site root and new posts are pushed the moment they go live.
- Yoast SEO offers IndexNow as a toggle in the Premium version.
- All in One SEO added it in 2022 as an addon enabled through the Feature Manager.
Run one integration, not several. Two plugins both pushing the same URL on every save doubles the submissions and risks the engine’s repeated-submission limits.
How the protocol works
Understanding the mechanics explains both the rapid adoption and its limits.
Key and key file
You create a key of 8 to 128 characters (letters, digits and hyphens) and publish it as a UTF-8 text file named after the key at the site root, for example https://example.com/a1b2c3d4.txt. The engine fetches that file once to confirm you control the host. Each subdomain needs its own key file. The file can live in a subfolder if you pass a keyLocation parameter with every request.
Submitting URLs
A single URL is a GET request with url and key parameters. Bulk submissions are a JSON POST with host, key and a urlList of up to 10,000 URLs. You can send to the shared endpoint at api.indexnow.org or to any one engine’s endpoint; either way the submission is shared with all participants. Redirected and removed pages should be submitted too, so engines pick up 301s, 404s and 410s quickly.
POST https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
{
"host": "example.com",
"key": "a1b2c3d4",
"urlList": [
"https://example.com/technical-seo/",
"https://example.com/old-page/"
]
}Response codes
200 means accepted. 202 means received but the key is not yet verified, which is normal for a site’s first submissions. 400 is a malformed request, 422 means the URL does not belong to the verified host or the key file is unreachable, and 429 is the rate limit, with a Retry-After header to respect. Exact daily limits are not published; each engine sets its own per site.
What it does not promise
A submission is a notification, not an instruction. Each engine decides independently whether to crawl and whether to index, and submitted URLs count against the site’s crawl quota. IndexNow is designed for new, changed and deleted URLs, not for resubmitting a whole site on a schedule, although a one-off full submission after a migration or redesign is accepted practice. The IndexNow FAQ itself recommends keeping an XML sitemap alongside it.
Why adopt it when Google ignores it
In the Nordic countries, Germany, Spain and most of the markets we work in, Google holds over 90% of search, so the honest answer is that IndexNow does nothing for most of your organic traffic. It is still worth the five minutes it takes:
- Bing is more than Bing. Its index feeds DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and the web results behind Microsoft Copilot. Windows and Edge default to it, so its share is higher on desktop and among office audiences than the headline market figures suggest.
- Markets where it is the main engine. Naver dominates South Korea, Seznam holds a meaningful share in the Czech Republic, and Yandex leads in Russia. A site targeting those markets without IndexNow is leaving its primary engine to find changes on its own.
- Removals and redirects. Submitting a deleted or redirected URL gets it dropped from Bing within hours instead of weeks. After a migration this is the fastest way to clear the old URLs.
- Zero ongoing cost. With Rank Math, Yoast Premium, AIOSEO or Cloudflare Crawler Hints, it is a toggle. There is no maintenance.
What it will not do is fix Google indexing. If pages are not being indexed by Google, the work is in technical SEO: crawlability, internal links, an accurate sitemap and content worth indexing. For individual stuck URLs, request indexing in Google Search Console, and for larger batches see our walkthrough of submitting multiple URLs with indexmenow.com. Paid “instant indexing” services that claim to push to Google via IndexNow are misdescribing what the protocol does.
Checklist for adopting IndexNow
- Pick one integration: your SEO plugin, your platform’s native option or Cloudflare Crawler Hints. Disable any others.
- Confirm the key file loads with a 200 status at the site root, from outside your network. A firewall or security plugin that blocks .txt files at the root is the most common silent failure.
- Publish or update a page and check the submission log. A 202 on the first try is fine; it should become 200 once the key is verified.
- Verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools and watch the IndexNow Insights report over the following weeks.
- Keep your XML sitemap accurate, including the lastmod dates. IndexNow handles today’s changes; the sitemap is how every engine, Google included, sees the whole site.
Disclaimer
This article reflects indexnow.org, the Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog, Cloudflare’s documentation and public statements by Google as of October 2026. Participation and adoption figures change; Microsoft’s most recent published totals date from December 2024. Check the official sources before relying on a specific number.
Reference sources
[Reference sources: to be added by the editor]
FAQ
Does Google support IndexNow?
No. Google said in November 2021 that it would test the protocol and has not adopted it. Submissions do not reach Google, and no plugin or service can change that.
Which search engines use IndexNow?
Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yep and Amazon. One submission to any of them is shared with all participants.
How many sites use IndexNow?
Microsoft reported more than 60 million websites in September 2023 and over 3.5 billion URL submissions a day in December 2024. No newer official total has been published.
Is IndexNow free?
Yes. The protocol is open and the endpoints are free. The WordPress plugins from Bing, Rank Math and AIOSEO include it at no cost; Yoast includes it in its paid Premium tier.
Does IndexNow replace an XML sitemap?
No. IndexNow announces individual changes to engines that participate. The sitemap describes the whole site to every engine, including Google, and the IndexNow FAQ recommends keeping both.
Can I submit deleted pages?
Yes, and you should. Submitting URLs that now return 404, 410 or a redirect is the fastest way to get them removed or updated in Bing and the other participating engines.