After initially dismissing Microsoft’s open-source IndexNow search engine indexing protocol, Yoast has changed its stance and will now support it.
In a conversation with a leading industry journal, Yoast founder Joost de Valk explains the reasons behind this decision.
The adoption of IndexNow by Yoast is a pivotal moment for publishers and the search marketing community. It may signal broader future acceptance of the new protocol, potentially transforming SEO and content marketing in a positive way.
IndexNow
IndexNow is an indexing protocol designed to enable websites to receive near-instant indexing by search engines.
This open-source initiative allows websites to notify search engines of new or updated content.
Search engines benefit by reducing redundant crawling of unchanged, already indexed web pages, thus saving data center resources.
The IndexNow protocol can also notify search engines of newly removed pages that return a 404 server response code.
IndexNow helps minimize energy consumption by data centers, contributing to the reduction of global warming causes.
Many companies, from search tools to web publishing platforms, already support IndexNow.
SEO plugin RankMath has also supported IndexNow, enabling web publishers to promptly notify search engines of new or updated pages.
The two major holdouts in adopting IndexNow have been Google and the Yoast SEO Plugin.
Until now.
Informal Announcement By Yoast
When IndexNow was first announced in October 2021, De Valk was a notable skeptic of the new indexing protocol, publicly expressing his doubts on social media.
De Valk wrote:
“Ever since XML sitemaps were conceived, URL discovery as far as we’re concerned is a ‘solved problem’. For most sites, getting search engines to crawl content is not a problem. Yoast SEO generates XML sitemaps and can even ping search engines when those change.”
Despite his initial opposition, De Valk has now informally announced that Yoast will integrate IndexNow into the premium version of the Yoast SEO plugin.
In a blog post, De Valk mentioned:
“This new standard is supported by Bing, Yandex, and Seznam so far, and I’ve heard rumors of other search engines joining their ranks. …We’ll be adding support for it to Yoast SEO Premium soon and look forward to seeing the impact it makes, if any.”
The blog post did not explain why Yoast had reversed its decision, prompting more inquiries.
De Valk responded:
“Yeah… so our opinion changed because of two reasons: We heard some other search engines and systems were implementing it. They changed how it worked a bit (or explained it better) where we only have to ping one endpoint. With that, we basically replace the XML sitemap ping with a call to IndexNow and it’s done.”
When asked if IndexNow might be available in the free version of Yoast, De Valk answered:
“Yeah! I can! Not sure when etc. We’ll see how well it works first.”
Yoast Integrating IndexNow
De Valk did not specify whether Google was among the search engines adopting IndexNow.
Nonetheless, Yoast’s adoption is significant because it is the largest WordPress SEO plugin globally, with over five million active installations.
This development helps establish IndexNow as an important indexing protocol and could encourage more search engines to adopt instant indexing, benefiting SEOs and publishers.
Featured image: Vulp/Shutterstock
