Achieving and maintaining a strong digital presence is essential for attracting and engaging online customers. And for most businesses, especially large enterprises with multiple digital properties, this means achieving top search engine rankings. However, SERPs (search engine results pages) rely heavily on crawlers to discover and index your content.
Unfortunately, crawlers operate on their own schedule to notify search engines about your important site updates. This means your content might not be found and ranked in time, potentially harming your site’s visibility, traffic, and conversions. But with IndexNow, webmasters have a powerful capability designed specifically for notifying search engines about content changes as soon as they happen. This ensures search engines are always aware of the latest updates, improving indexing efficiency and search result accuracy.
While implementing the IndexNow open-source protocol on your website is fairly straightforward, there are a few rules of the road regarding the type of content to notify IndexNow and the timing. In this blog post, we’ll examine when and what types of content various industries should notify IndexNow.
When and how shopping sites should notify IndexNow
For large shopping sites like Amazon, it’s important to always maintain search engine relevance and ensure that their latest information is quickly indexed and available to potential customers. This rapid indexing enhances their search engine visibility, which can lead to increased traffic and sales. It also helps maintain accurate and up-to-date information in search results, improving the overall shopping experience for customers and keeping the site competitive.
Here are some key instances when a large shopping site should notify IndexNow:
- New product listings: Notify IndexNow as soon as new products are added to ensure they are quickly indexed and available to potential customers.
- Price changes/inventory: As soon as a product becomes unavailable, notify IndexNow and search engines to avoid a negative click back signal to your website.
- Promotional content: Notify IndexNow of any new promotional offers or sales to attract more customers and increase traffic.
- Content updates: Inform IndexNow of any significant changes to existing content, such as product descriptions or images, to ensure the latest information is indexed.
- Reviews: To ensure that customer feedback is promptly indexed and reflected in search results without over-notifying, take an incremental approach. For example, notify IndexNow for each new review from 1-20, then for each 5 new reviews from 20 to 100, then for each 10 new reviews from 100 to 1000, and so on.
When and how video sharing platforms should notify IndexNow
Video sharing sites can significantly benefit from immediate content notifications to search engines using IndexNow. Rapid indexing will enhance the visibility of new videos in search results, helping to drive more traffic to the site and higher viewer engagement. Additionally, it helps maintain accurate and up-to-date information in search results, improving the overall user experience and keeping the platform competitive.
Here are some key instances when a video sharing site would want to notify IndexNow:
- New Video Uploads: Whenever new videos are uploaded to the platform, notifying IndexNow ensures that search engines quickly index the latest content, making it available to viewers sooner.
- Video Title and Description Updates: If there are any changes to video titles or descriptions, notifying IndexNow helps search engines reflect the most current information, improving the accuracy and relevance of search results.
- Metadata Changes: Updates to video metadata, such as tags, categories, or thumbnails, can be notified to IndexNow to ensure that search engines have the latest information.
- User Engagement Metrics: Significant changes in user engagement metrics, such as number of view counts, likes, comments, and shares, can be notified to IndexNow to help search engines understand the popularity and relevance of the content. However, it is not necessary to notify for each and every engagement. Instead, notify IndexNow incrementally for each engagement from 1-20, then for every 5 engagement from 20 to 100, then every 10 from 100 to 1000, and so on.
- Content Removals: When videos are removed from the platform, notifying IndexNow helps search engines update their indexes to prevent users from landing on unavailable content.
- Live Stream Announcements: For upcoming live streams, notifying IndexNow can help search engines index the event quickly, increasing visibility and attracting more viewers. As more users join the stream, continue to notify incrementally as you would engagement metrics.
How and when travel sites should notify IndexNow
Travel sites can significantly benefit from immediate content notifications to search engines using IndexNow. Rapid indexing will enhance the visibility of new travel deals, destination guides, and user reviews in search results, helping to drive more traffic to the site and higher user engagement. Additionally, it helps maintain accurate and up-to-date information in search results, improving the overall user experience and keeping the platform competitive.
Here are some key instances when a travel site would want to notify IndexNow:
- New Destinations and Hotels: Whenever new destinations or hotels are added or removed from the platform, notifying IndexNow ensures that search engines quickly index the latest changes, making them available to potential travelers sooner.
- Travel Deals and Promotions: Whenever new travel deals or offers are added to the platform, notifying IndexNow ensures that search engines quickly index the latest deals, making them available to potential travelers sooner.
- Destination Guide Updates: If there are any changes to destination guides, such as new attractions or updated information, notifying IndexNow helps search engines reflect the most current information, improving the accuracy and relevance of search results.
- User Reviews: Significant changes in user reviews, such as new reviews or updates to existing ones, can be notified to IndexNow to help search engines understand the popularity and relevance of destinations or services. To ensure that customer feedback is promptly indexed and reflected in search results without over-notifying, take an incremental approach. For example, notify IndexNow for each new review from 1-20, then for every 5 new reviews from 20 to 100, then every 10 new reviews from 100 to 1000, and so on.
- Content Removals: When travel deals or destination guides are removed from the platform, notifying IndexNow helps search engines update their indexes to prevent users from landing on unavailable content.
Websites with infrequent updates
While they may not get a lot of engagement, jobs sites such as Indeed or Classified Ads sites are still substantial, and indexing certain types of content is crucial for maintaining visibility and relevance in search results.
Here are some key instances when low engagement sites would want to notify IndexNow:
- Content Updates: Whenever there are significant updates to existing content, such as changes to job descriptions, company profiles, or other important information, notifying IndexNow helps ensure that search engines reflect the latest information.
- New Blog Posts or Articles: If the site includes a blog or news section, notifying IndexNow when new blog posts or articles are published or updated can help improve their visibility in search results.
- Event Announcements: For sites that host events, such as job fairs or webinars, notifying IndexNow about upcoming events and important updates can help increase their visibility and attract more participants, as well as keep people aware of any changes.
- User-Generated Content: For sites that allow user-generated content, such as forums or discussion boards, notifying IndexNow about new or updated posts and user generated comments can help improve the visibility and relevance of this content in search results. However, it is not necessary to notify for each and every engagement. Instead, notify IndexNow incrementally for each engagement from 1-20, then for every 5 engagements from 20 to 100, every 10 from 100 to 1000, and so on.
- Policy Changes: If there are updates to site policies, terms of service, or privacy policies, notifying IndexNow ensures that search engines have the most current information.
Maximizing Search Engine Visibility with IndexNow
IndexNow offers a powerful solution for webmasters to ensure their added, updated, and deleted content is promptly indexed by search engines. Practically any website with content can benefit from IndexNow, as it helps maintain up-to-date information in search results, enhancing visibility, traffic, and user engagement. Whether it's new product listings, video uploads, travel deals, or job postings, notifying IndexNow at the right times can significantly improve indexing efficiency and search result accuracy.
Better online visibility isn’t just about having a website. It’s about your latest content being found. To get started with IndexNow, simply click here and follow the instructions.
Fabrice Canel
Principal Product Manager
Microsoft Bing
