LaunchRepo.

Glossary term

IndexNow

An open protocol to notify participating search engines that a URL was added or changed, instead of waiting for a crawl.

Definition

IndexNow is an open protocol: a site owner sends a list of added or changed URLs to a shared endpoint, authenticated by a key file hosted on the domain, and participating search engines pick the notification up. Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver and Yep are among the participating engines; Google is not on the list and relies on its own crawling and sitemaps.

IndexNow does not index anything — it announces. Whether a page is shown in results still depends on the engine’s own evaluation.

Sources: IndexNow.org: Documentation · IndexNow.org: Participating search engines

Example

You publish a comparison page and update your pricing page on the same afternoon. Your deploy script compares the new sitemap with the previous one, finds exactly those two URLs and sends them in one JSON request to the shared IndexNow endpoint. The key file at the root of your domain proves the site is yours. The request body is below.

Bing and the other participating engines can now fetch both pages without waiting for their next crawl. Google is not on the list of participants, so for Google your updated sitemap and internal links still do the work. Whether either page appears in results remains each engine’s own decision.

POST https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8

{
  "host": "yourproduct.example",
  "key": "<your-key>",
  "keyLocation": "https://yourproduct.example/<your-key>.txt",
  "urlList": [
    "https://yourproduct.example/pricing/",
    "https://yourproduct.example/vs/other-tool/"
  ]
}

Why it matters for a directory launch

A launch produces many new pages at once — your own launch page, the changelog, comparison pages — and the participating engines can pick them up within hours instead of whenever the crawler returns. It costs nothing and replaces nothing; sitemaps and internal links still do the work for Google.

How LaunchRepo handles it

After a deployment, launchrepo.dev sends IndexNow only the URLs that are new, re-dated or removed compared with the previous sitemap; the key file lives on the domain. The LaunchRepo repository does not submit your URLs anywhere: directory listing pages belong to the directory, and your own site’s indexing is your own setup. For directories, the priority method checks whether Google has indexed sample listing pages instead.

Go deeper

Directory backlinks: what we can prove

Why the priority method checks whether Google has indexed sample listing pages, and what that check can and cannot tell you about a directory.

See the term in the repository

LaunchRepo is 299 directory playbooks, a product context file and a submission tracker your own agent runs. Pay €119.00 once; use it for every product you own.

See pricing