Why it matters to a buyer
IndexNow is sometimes sold as a way to speed up Google indexing, and a buyer should know that is not accurate: Google has stated it does not use IndexNow signals, so the practical benefit is limited to the engines that do participate. It is still a genuinely useful, low-cost integration for a site that cares about Bing or Yandex visibility, or that wants prices and stock changes reflected quickly on those engines, and it costs little to add once a site has the technical capability.
How it is measured or applied
A site pings an IndexNow endpoint with the changed URL and a key it hosts on its own domain to prove ownership, either directly through an API call or through a plugin most major CMS and ecommerce platforms now offer. Participating engines then prioritise crawling that URL rather than waiting for their normal discovery cycle. Its effect is checked in Bing Webmaster Tools' IndexNow reporting, which shows submitted URLs and their crawl status, since there is no equivalent visibility in Google Search Console.
Sources
- IndexNow documentation, IndexNow.org
