Latest Content Version With IndexNow
Learn how search engine crawlers discover pages and how indexing works to store your content in search engine databases for better visibility and rankings.
Latest Content Version With IndexNow
Crawlers. Crawling is when search engines follow hyperlinks (URLs) to discover new content, after the search engines crawl or discover a page, they index it. Indexing is the process of analyzing the content, media, tags, categories, and everything you’ve put on the page. Once they do this, the search engine stores this data in its database or index.
A web crawler is an online bot that explores web pages on the internet to learn about them and their content, all to serve this information to online searchers when they pose a query on a respective search engine. Because the internet is also known as the World Wide Web, it is fitting that a bot is known as a crawler, and other names include SEO spider, website crawler, or web crawlers.
The index is a database of web pages that the crawler has discovered. This database is what a search engine like Google pulls its search results from. So that when you search for something on Google, the results you see aren’t being generated live; rather, the search engine is sifting through its existing index.
In the ever-evolving landscape of SEO, crawlers are a necessary evil. A critical component ensuring that your content is discovered, indexed, and ranked by search engines. However, the traditional approach to SEO often involves a passive stance, waiting for search engines such as Google to crawl your site on their own schedule, which affects your site’s visibility and ultimately its success.
What is IndexNow?
IndexNow is an easy way for website owners to instantly inform search engines and web crawlers used for information retrieval (‘search engines’) about the latest changes on their website. In its simplest form, IndexNow is a simple ping so that search engines know that a URL and its content have been added, updated, or deleted, enabling search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results. However, without IndexNow, it takes days to weeks for search engines to discover that the content has changed, as search engines don’t crawl every URL often. IndexNow is offered under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License and has support from Microsoft Bing, Seznam.cz, Yandex.
This free, open-source protocol aids in maintaining your relevancy and position in search engines by enabling you to proactively notify them of the new, updated, or removed content on your website. IndexNow is a game-changer for SEO professionals looking to improve their content’s visibility, offering a solution: instant indexing. It is a protocol that allows websites to directly notify search engines about content changes.
IndexNow operates on a “push” model, where websites proactively notify search engines of changes. This differs from the traditional “pull” model, where search engines crawl websites to discover updates.
Some of the meaningful changes for several different industries include:
Digital Retail
Digital retail encompasses all aspects of a business’s digital presence, including online and offline integration, focusing on creating a seamless shopping experience across all potential digital channels.
IndexNow is an essential tool that helps ensure customers always have access to your most current and accurate product information. Immediate notification of stock status changes boosts reliability and consumer confidence.
About launching a new product. With IndexNow, the moment a new item hits your website, it can be indexed, helping capture the initial surge of interest and convert it into sales. In the fast-paced online retail environment, the latest pricing is immediately available to consumers with IndexNow, maintaining transparency and trust.
Dynamic Websites
A dynamic website generates a page dynamically by processing code and querying databases on the server before delivering the final web page to the visitor. The website can deliver the same content to each visitor based on various factors, including time of day, data on the user, user preferences, and so on.
For sites with moderate to extreme fluctuations, it can be especially difficult to know when to notify IndexNow to strategically ensure content remains current in search engine results. Updating IndexNow at critical intervals, with the release of significant financial news, stock updates, or market analysis. Updating scores and significant event information based on the importance and action of the game, especially during and immediately after games. For sites with price fluctuations per day of the year, notify IndexNow if the default price changes when customers visit your site from search engines.
When Not To Notify
Do not flood IndexNow with notifications for the same URL in a short timeframe, even if a piece of content becomes exceptionally popular and garners numerous views quickly, avoid notifying it too frequently, as this can cause search engines to mistrust your content, resulting in lower rankings.
Timing is important while notifying IndexNow. Some CMS platforms may have a lag between the time you make your changes and when they are reflected on the web server. Then it is best to notify IndexNow only after your content is live to avoid search engines from indexing dead links or outdated content prematurely.
To avoid outdated content, it is important to notify IndexNow when you add, update, or remove content in search engines, ultimately leading to poor user experiences, and potentially negatively impacting the site’s ranking.
