How to Add IndexNow in WordPress (& Why Use It in 2026)

IndexNow speeds up how quickly search engines discover your new and updated pages. Instead of waiting for a crawler to visit, your site sends a ping the moment a page is published, updated, or deleted, and every participating search engine gets the message.

That matters more than it used to. Bing’s index feeds AI assistants like Copilot, so a page Bing hasn’t seen yet can’t be cited in an answer.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to add IndexNow to WordPress, step by step.

What Is IndexNow and Why Does It Matter?

IndexNow is a free, open-source protocol that lets website owners instantly notify (“ping”) participating search engines when a page is added, updated, or deleted. Instead of waiting days or weeks for a bot to discover changes, IndexNow triggers immediate crawling on supported search engines.

The protocol was started by Microsoft, and it is now supported by Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yep, and Amazon. Google still doesn’t support it.

IndexNow is becoming more important as Bing increasingly powers AI search and answer tools. For example, Bing’s search index helps power Microsoft Copilot, so keeping your content up to date in Bing can help ensure that Copilot has access to the latest version of your pages when generating answers.

Keep in mind that submitting a URL doesn’t guarantee that it will be indexed right away. The search engine still decides whether to index the page and include it in search results.

Now, let’s take a look at how to add IndexNow in WordPress.

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How to Add IndexNow in WordPress

Most premium WordPress SEO plugins like AIOSEO, Yoast, etc now support the IndexNow feature. If you don’t have a premium SEO plugin, then you can start by installing and activating the free IndexNow plugin. For more details, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to go to the IndexNow menu in your WordPress dashboard. Then, click on the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button. The plugin automatically generates the API key needed to verify that you own the website and configures it for you.

After that, you’ll see the IndexNow dashboard, where you can monitor the URLs your site submits to search engines and see your submission history.

That’s all you need to do. From now on, the plugin automatically notifies participating search engines whenever you publish, update, or delete a post, so you don’t have to submit those changes manually.

Alternatively, if you’re using a premium SEO plugin like All in One SEO (AIOSEO) Pro or Yoast, you may already have IndexNow available and switched off. You can easily enable that feature instead of installing a dedicated plugin for it.

We use AIOSEO so we will show you how to enable IndexNow for your sites.

First, go to All in One SEO » Feature Manager and click ‘Activate’ under IndexNow. AIOSEO generates the API key needed to verify that you own the website and configures it for you.

AIOSEO will automatically submit your future content updates to IndexNow without any further configuration. 

How to Confirm IndexNow Is Actually Working

If you’re using the free IndexNow plugin, the quickest way to confirm that it’s working is by going to the IndexNow dashboard in your WordPress admin. It shows a list of URLs your site has submitted successfully.

If you’re using AIOSEO instead, you can confirm it’s working by navigating to All in One SEO » General Settings and click the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab.

Then click the IndexNow icon and you should see your IndexNow API Key.

Select the key and copy it. Next go to your website’s homepage and paste the key after the URL of your site and add “.txt” to the end so it looks like this:

You should now see your API key displayed in your browser, which means it’s working.

You can also verify it in Bing Webmaster Tools, regardless of which plugin you’re using. Bing shows you what it did with the URLs you submitted using IndexNow.

Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and select your site. Next, Go to IndexNow and review your submissions.

Bing shows your latest 1,000 URLs, and tells you whether each one was crawled, indexed, the date it was first indexed, and more. If your site is not added yet, read our guide on adding your website to Bing Webmaster Tools.

Frequently Asked Questions About IndexNow

Here are the questions our readers ask most often about IndexNow and WordPress.

1. How fast does IndexNow get my content indexed?

Search engines usually hear about your URL within minutes. Indexing is a separate step. The search engine still decides whether your page is worth adding, and that can take longer. IndexNow speeds up the discovery, not the decision.

2. Does IndexNow hurt my WordPress site’s SEO?

No, IndexNow does not hurt your WordPress site’s SEO. The IndexNow plugin sends a URL when the page really changes, and that is all search engines want. If you send the same URLs over and over, search engines just return an error. A 422 error means your URL does not match your key or your domain, and a 429 error means you sent too many requests and got throttled.

3. How do I get indexed faster on Google?

You can submit your URLs directly in Google Search Console. Simply paste your URL into the inspection bar at the top of the GSC page and press Enter. Then click ‘Request Indexing’. Google adds your page to a priority crawl queue.

There is a daily limit on these requests, so save them for pages that matter. Also keep your XML sitemap submitted in Google Search Console, since that is how Google finds the rest of your content.

Additional Resources

We hope this article helped you learn how to add IndexNow in WordPress. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide for beginners to improve your SEO rankings.

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