IndexNow has managed to create a lot of buzz in the “search” space today and not without reasons. In the month of August 2022, IndexNow was credited with 7% of all new URLs clicked on Bing. With 16 million websites currently using this “ping protocol”, one can’t simply rule out its significance in SEO.
Before delving into further details of IndexNow and finding out whether you as a Google analytics consultant should know about this protocol or not, let’s find out what IndexNow is.
What is IndexNow?
IndexNow can simply be described as a method with the help of which website owners can instantly inform the search engines about the latest content changes that they have introduced to their websites. So, if you’re using IndexNow, the search engine would know if your URL and its content have been modified, added, or deleted. The search engines, in turn, take little or no time to reflect these changes in the results.
So, it can easily be said that IndexNow employs the push indexing method to speed up the process of indexing. Traditionally, the “pull” indexing model entails the search engines sending their bots to your website to source/pull data for indexing. With push indexing, you are simply taking control – i.e., not waiting for the search engines to visit your site but asking them to come to your website instantly after the content has been updated.
Once you submit the URL through the API to a search engine, the same will be simultaneously submitted to all the search engines using this protocol.
Now, Google is not one of the participating search engines that we are talking about here. So, as a Google Analytics consultant, do you think you don’t have to do anything with it? Well… the answer is partly a “no” and partly a “yes”.
Let’s explore…
Google has said that it’s not using the IndexNow API yet because they themselves have a very efficient crawling index in place and they continue to work on it. However, back in November 2021, they had said that they would be testing IndexNo soon.
So, you never know! Google might have a change of heart and mind!
Why we think is Google will eventually jump the bandwagon!
We think a seasoned Google Analytics consultant, already by now, has had his unofficial experiments with IndexNow. If that’s the case, there’s no escaping the benefits of this ping protocol. We have already talked about their ability to facilitate the “push” revolution in search. Instead of waiting for the search engines to crawl your website, you’re asking them to crawl your site. You should know why model attribution data in Google Analytics is vital in business!
It benefits your site and the search engines in more ways than we can imagine! Search engines actually end up using a lot (yes, A LOTTTT!!!) of energy on the crawling activities. As a Google analytics consultant you may be duly aware of the fact that Google itself ends up crawling a page multiple times even if there is nothing new there. Now, experts would argue that at present that’s the only way to ascertain accuracy. And, there’s clearly no debating this view! With IndexNow, however, this sheer waste of time and energy can be done away with! If nobody is inviting these engines, they don’t have to waste the time and energy crawling the sites. Lately GA4 setup is important for your website and hpw to setup GA4?
So…
Time saved. Energy saved.
Isn’t that amazing?
Another comparatively less significant benefit of IndexNow is its simplicity and speed. You can implement it on your website by following these 4 simple steps!
- Generate API key
- Host your API key on the root directory of your website
- Submit your URL (You have the option to submit URLs individually or in bulk employing your API key location or as the URL parameter- isn’t that great?)
- Get details of the status of the URLs submitted by you
That shouldn’t really take a lot of effort, we think!
What do you think?
Are you a Google analytics consultant? Have you checked out IndexNow already? What do you think about its possible adoption by Google?
The fact that names like Microsoft and Yandex were the first participating search engines, renders a lot of credibility to IndexNow! Isn’t it?
