IndexNow
IndexNow is an open protocol that lets a site notify search engines the moment a URL is added, updated or deleted, instead of waiting for the next crawl. Bing, Yandex, Seznam and Naver support it. Google has trialled it but does not use it.
Why it matters for your rankings
IndexNow inverts the usual model. Rather than search engines periodically checking whether anything changed, your site tells them at the moment of publication, which removes the discovery delay entirely on supporting engines.
For large or fast-moving sites, news publishers, ecommerce catalogues and job boards, that delay is a real cost: a listing indexed three days late may be irrelevant by the time it appears. The honest caveat is that Google, which drives most traffic for most sites, does not participate. That makes IndexNow worthwhile but secondary, and it is no substitute for the internal linking and crawl efficiency work that determines how Google finds your pages.
How to check it on your site
Check for built-in support
Cloudflare, Wix, Duda and several WordPress SEO plugins can enable IndexNow with a single toggle.
Generate and host a key
Create an API key and place the key file at your domain root so engines can verify ownership.
Submit on publish and update
Trigger submission from your CMS on create, update and delete rather than in scheduled batches.
Verify in Bing Webmaster Tools
It reports submitted URLs so you can confirm the integration is actually firing.