Publish once. Search engines hear about it straight away.

What IndexNow is

Search engines normally discover changes on your site by crawling it: they visit pages on their own schedule, follow links and reread your sitemap from time to time. For a large, popular site that might happen many times a day. For a small or new site, a fresh post can wait days before a crawler notices it.

IndexNow flips that around. It's an open protocol, launched by Microsoft Bing and Yandex in 2021, that lets a website tell search engines directly that a URL has been added, changed or removed. One notification goes to an IndexNow endpoint, and participating search engines share it with each other, so you don't have to notify each one separately. Bing, Yandex, Seznam and Naver are among the engines that take part.

The result is that a new post can be known to those search engines within minutes of publishing, rather than whenever the next crawl happens to come around. Updates to existing pages, such as a corrected price or a refreshed guide, reach them just as quickly.

Why it's worth turning on

• Faster discovery. New and updated pages are known to participating engines almost straight away.
• Less wasted crawling. Search engines can spend their crawl effort on pages that actually changed, rather than rechecking everything.
• Removals are noticed too. When you unpublish or delete a page, a notification helps it drop out of results sooner.
• No effort once it's set up. With Rilea SEO, it runs every time you publish without you thinking about it.

Bing's results also power other search experiences, so faster indexing on Bing can reach further than Bing itself. For sites that publish time-sensitive content, such as news, offers, events or prices, the speed matters most.

How Rilea SEO handles it

The key

IndexNow needs a way to check that notifications for your site really come from you. That's done with a key: a random string that you include in each notification and also publish as a small text file at the root of your site. When a search engine receives a notification, it checks the key file matches.

Rilea SEO generates a 32-character key the first time it's needed, stores it in your WordPress settings, and serves the key file automatically at your site's root. You don't create or upload anything. The settings page links to the file so you can check it.

Automatic submissions

Whenever a post in one of your chosen post types is published, updated while published, or moved from published to draft, private or trash, Rilea SEO schedules a notification for its URL. It waits a few seconds before sending, so the permalink is final, which matters when you change a slug at the same time as publishing. Revisions and autosaves are ignored, and so is content that isn't publicly viewable.

By default, posts, pages and WooCommerce products are included. You can add or remove post types in Rilea SEO, then Settings, then IndexNow.

Manual submissions

Sometimes you want to notify search engines about many URLs at once: after updating prices across a category, fixing a template that affects every post, or launching a new section. In Rilea SEO, then Tools, you'll find an IndexNow box. Paste one URL per line and click Submit URLs. Rilea SEO sends them in a single notification.

From the posts list

In the WordPress posts, pages or products list, select the items you want and choose "Rilea: submit to IndexNow" from the bulk actions menu. It's a quick way to resend a handful of important pages without copying URLs.

The log

Every submission, automatic or manual, is logged with the time, the URLs sent and the response code from IndexNow. The latest 100 are shown in Rilea SEO, then Tools. A 200 or 202 response means the notification was accepted. Other codes point to a problem, which the troubleshooting section below covers.

IndexNow and your sitemap

IndexNow and XML sitemaps do different jobs and work best together.

• Your sitemap is a complete list of the pages you want indexed. Every major search engine reads it, including Google. It's the safety net that makes sure nothing is missed.
• IndexNow is a fast notification of what's just changed. It only reaches the engines that take part, but it reaches them immediately.

Keep your sitemap submitted in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and keep IndexNow on. Google has tested IndexNow but doesn't currently use it, so for Google your sitemap, internal links and Search Console remain the way to get pages discovered. The sitemaps guide explains how to submit yours.

What about Google's Indexing API?

You may have seen plugins offer "instant indexing for Google" using Google's Indexing API. Google states that the Indexing API is only for pages with job posting or livestream structured data. Using it for ordinary posts and pages is outside its intended use, so Rilea SEO doesn't offer it. For Google, publish good content, link to it from related pages, keep your sitemap up to date and use Search Console's URL Inspection tool when you need a specific page looked at.

Good practice

• Submit real changes. IndexNow is for content that has actually changed. Resubmitting unchanged pages repeatedly doesn't help and may be ignored.
• Choose sensible post types. Include content you want in search results. Leave out post types that exist only for internal use.
• Keep noindexed content in mind. A notification doesn't override a noindex tag. If a page is set to noindex, search engines will still leave it out.
• Check the log after big changes. After a migration or redesign, look at the log to make sure notifications are being accepted.
• Use Bing Webmaster Tools. It shows IndexNow submissions it has received, alongside crawl and index data for your site.

Troubleshooting

The key file shows a 404

Another plugin or a server rule may be intercepting text files at the site root. Check that no security or caching rule blocks it, and clear your cache. Rilea SEO serves the file before WordPress loads the page, so it doesn't need a physical file.

Submissions return 403

The key couldn't be verified, usually because the key file isn't reachable. Open the key file link from the settings in a private browser window and check it loads.

Submissions return 422

The URLs don't belong to the host in the notification. This can happen if your WordPress address settings don't match the domain you're submitting. Check Settings, then General.

Submissions return 429

Too many requests in a short time. This can happen after large bulk updates. Wait and submit again later.

Nothing appears in the log

Check IndexNow is enabled and the post type is selected. Automatic submissions use WordPress's scheduled events, which run when your site gets visits. On a site with very low traffic, or with WordPress cron disabled and no server cron set up, they can be delayed.

Privacy

IndexNow notifications contain only your site's host name, your key, the key file's address and the URLs being submitted. No visitor data or content is sent. Rilea SEO sends them to the shared IndexNow endpoint at api.indexnow.org, which passes them on to participating engines. If you'd rather not use IndexNow, switch it off in the settings and nothing is sent.

Switching from another plugin

If you used IndexNow through Yoast SEO Premium, Rank Math or Microsoft's own IndexNow plugin, you can switch to Rilea SEO's built-in support. Deactivate the old integration so pages aren't submitted twice. Rilea SEO uses its own key, which is fine: search engines check each notification against the key file it names, and old keys simply stop being used.

Who benefits most

Every site can turn IndexNow on and forget about it, but some see a clearer difference than others:

• News and magazine sites. Stories lose value quickly. Getting a new article in front of Bing within minutes rather than hours can decide whether it's seen at all.
• Online stores. Prices, stock and product details change often. Notifying search engines when a product page changes helps keep the details in search results current.
• Event and offer pages. Pages with a short life benefit from being found quickly, and from dropping out of results quickly once they're removed.
• New sites. A site without many links pointing to it may be crawled rarely. IndexNow gives participating engines a direct signal instead of waiting to be found.
• Large sites. When thousands of pages exist, telling search engines exactly which ones changed helps them spend crawl effort where it matters.

Checking it's working

The quickest check is Rilea SEO's own log: update a post, wait a minute or two, then look in Rilea SEO, then Tools. You should see the post's URL with a response code of 200 or 202. For a fuller picture, sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools, where the IndexNow section lists the URLs Bing has received from your site and when. If the log shows accepted submissions but Bing's report is empty, give it a little time; reports there aren't always instant.

Once it's confirmed, there's nothing more to do. Rilea SEO will keep sending notifications every time you publish, update or remove content in the post types you chose.

If you ever move your site to a new domain, Rilea SEO keeps the same key, and notifications automatically use the new address, because they're built from your current WordPress settings each time. Just check the key file loads on the new domain after the move.