Google will test IndexNow

Microsoft Bing announced in October the development of a new crawling protocol called IndexNow, which is expected to improve the efficiency of crawling and indexing. However, Google has remained silent until now whether they will adopt it.

A Google spokesperson issued a statement confirming that Google will test the new IndexNow protocol.

Index now

Microsoft Bing and Yandex launched a new open source agreement called IndexNow, which allows publishers to notify search engines when web pages are updated or new pages are added.

IndexNow alleviates the need for search engines to crawl websites to check whether they have been updated, thereby saving bandwidth and resources on the search engine and publisher ends.

Major content management systems, content delivery networks, and SEO companies have announced support for the new agreement.

The list of companies adopting the IndexNow agreement includes:

• Vickers
• Suspect
• Cloud flare
• Red dance
• Baohua
• crawl
• one person
• Yext

Google has actively improved crawl efficiency

The widespread acceptance of IndexNow depends to some extent on what Google will do, and until today, Google has not commented on the new agreement.

Sustainability and efficiency are Google’s top concerns, so IndexNow seems to be a good choice.

According to a Google spokesperson:

“Google’s crawling mechanism is very efficient and is still improving.

For example, last year we announced that Googlebot supports HTTP/2, which is the basic data transfer protocol for the next generation of networks.

HTTP/2 is significantly more efficient than its predecessor and saves resources for Google and the website. We use HTTP/2 in more than half of our crawls. “

Google announces it will test IndexNow

At present, Google seems to be cautious about the new agreement, which makes sense. Crawling is the backbone of search engines, so any changes to the protocol should be accompanied by obvious benefits.

According to Google:

“We take a holistic approach to Google’s sustainability, including striving to develop the most effective and accurate web index.

We have been carbon neutral since 2007. By 2030, our data centers and parks will be carbon-free.

We are encouraged by the work to improve the efficiency of web crawling, and we will test the potential benefits of this protocol. “

Wait for WordPress

The next most influential entity after Google is WordPress. WordPress is still talking about it, and they seem to encourage the development of plugins rather than rush to integrate it into the WordPress core itself. WordPress is also seeking wider industry support, which of course means Google and other search engines.

Lead developer of WordPress Comment:

• I am still not 100% convinced that it is ideal to have WordPress ping each engine individually, but this is not the worst.
• I am still not 100% convinced that API keys/authentication callbacks should be allowed.
• All supported providers need to be defaulted in the core so as not to give priority to any given engine

I think this should first be developed as a plugin, and then submitted to the WordPress core as a feature plugin to allow separate development, and then it is recommended to add it to the core after the feature is complete.

This will also allow website owners to choose to use it before WordPress fully implements it (this will be the absolute earliest in WordPress 6.0, estimated to be the second quarter of 2022).

Google will test IndexNow

Google’s adoption of IndexNow is a big deal for the entire industry, and may be enough for WordPress to include it in its core, or if it doesn’t, include it in a plugin. It makes sense for Google to test it. There is no news on how long this test will last.