IndexNow for URL submission. Anyone using it in ZenCart?

[schoolboy]

wsworx: Were you able to incorporate indexnow? My SEO folks are pushing me adopt this. thanks.

Fire your "SEO" consultants. (Most of these "SEO experts" are charlatans, out there to steal your cash.) Google does not support indexnow. All you need do is:
1. Make sure your content is relevant, accurate, informative, and useful to your visitors. Avoid anything that is considered "duplicate content".
2. Your website obeys all HTML and WEB protocols.
3. Loads efficiently on all devices, with good imagery and has good overall operational efficiency.
4. Has logical and accurate navigation and no internal links that are "dead".
5. Via your Google account, alert Google to specific and important URL's on your website.

Google decides if your content is worth indexing... nothing you can do (other than the above) influences indexing.

[balihr]

Fire your "SEO" consultants. (Most of these "SEO experts" are charlatans, out there to steal your cash.) Google does not support indexnow. All you need do is:
1. Make sure your content is relevant, accurate, informative, and useful to your visitors. Avoid anything that is considered "duplicate content".
2. Your website obeys all HTML and WEB protocols.
3. Loads efficiently on all devices, with good imagery and has good overall operational efficiency.
4. Has logical and accurate navigation and no internal links that are "dead".
5. Via your Google account, alert Google to specific and important URL's on your website.

Google decides if your content is worth indexing... nothing you can do (other than the above) influences indexing.

Unfortunately, I'll have to disagree, but only with the highlighted part. Points 1-5 are spot on, of course. However, as much we all hate to admit it, Google is not the only search engine out there and the only God we bow to. Bing supports it and DuckDuckGo relies on Bing, then we have Yandex and Seznam and Naver. This list is likely to expand - rich snippets (structured data) were originally ignored by some search engines, nowadays it's a must-have. You might think the latter search engines are irrelevant, but Bing is still quite important and usually simply left out because of Google Almighty. It's an opportunity you're missing out on.

If the SEO company is presenting it as critical, then I agree they are to be reconsidered. But, if they're pushing for it as part of a campaign improvement, and as an opportunity to get more out organic SEO, then they're 100% right...

It's time for everyone involved in Zen Cart to stop rejecting modern technologies and simply adapt to the ever-changing industry. Instead of saying "it won't help with Google", the question we should be asking "where would it help" - if it does indeed help (without causing any harm, of course), then it's a feature worth having. If it opens the door to 2% more market than you had before, that's a 2% gain, not loss.

[schoolboy]

Unfortunately, I'll have to disagree, but only with the highlighted part.

The new tech we need to be optimising for is LLM's and AI. Already XAI's Grok is far superior to Google Search. Google's AI offerings are "adequate". For over a year now, I have been polishing up content on my websites to leverage how AI reacts to a wide range of queries relating to the stuff I sell. The results are very promising. (I opertate B2B mostly, so don't worry about the consumer market).
"SEO" has been a minefield for decades, and 99 out of 100 so-called "SEO experts" are charlatans.
While there are other search engines, Google covers around 93% worldwide (certainly in countries that matter to western sellers). Yandex is Russan, B a i d u is Chinese. I would avoid anything Russian - and unless China is a market for you, there's no point in optimising for b a I D U. Nobody uses Bing.

[simon1066]

... Nobody uses Bing.

Anecdotally I've heard that ChatGPT Search is becoming more popular and AFAIK it uses Bing search as a data source. Not that we're calling ChatGPT a 'body' ...yet.

[balihr]

You're missing my point. What HARM will come from implementing IndexNow? And is it potentially beneficial?

While there are other search engines, Google covers around 93% worldwide (certainly in countries that matter to western sellers).

While your numbers are almost correct for the UK, it does slightly vary worldwide, with US and CA being under 90% and Europe being closer to 80%.

Again, as I said earlier, if this were to open the door to 2% more market, it's a 2% increase. At 0 cost. Show me a merchant who would rather get 50 orders per day instead of 51.

So again, please tell me the downsides of having this implemented. The benefits are obvious - it will either help or won't make a difference. If there are no downsides involved, I'm pretty sure everyone would be willing to take the "risk". I bet every merchant using Zen Cart is biting their nails thinking "gosh, if I receive one or two extra orders today, will I be able to handle it?"

Nobody uses Bing.

And nobody likes apples.

[chadlly2003]

Unfortunately, I'll have to disagree, but only with the highlighted part. Points 1-5 are spot on, of course. However, as much we all hate to admit it, Google is not the only search engine out there and the only God we bow to. Bing supports it and DuckDuckGo relies on Bing, then we have Yandex and Seznam and Naver. This list is likely to expand - rich snippets (structured data) were originally ignored by some search engines, nowadays it's a must-have. You might think the latter search engines are irrelevant, but Bing is still quite important and usually simply left out because of Google Almighty. It's an opportunity you're missing out on.

If the SEO company is presenting it as critical, then I agree they are to be reconsidered. But, if they're pushing for it as part of a campaign improvement, and as an opportunity to get more out organic SEO, then they're 100% right...

It's time for everyone involved in Zen Cart to stop rejecting modern technologies and simply adapt to the ever-changing industry. Instead of saying "it won't help with Google", the question we should be asking "where would it help" - if it does indeed help (without causing any harm, of course), then it's a feature worth having. If it opens the door to 2% more market than you had before, that's a 2% gain, not loss.

If you're following Google's guidelines and properly structuring your website for SEO, there's no need to rely on third-party tools. Especially for a site indexing. Google is the standard just follow there lead....

Think about it... Why use external software to index your site when you can submit it directly to the source? Skip the middleman and save yourself time and effort.

[balihr]

If you're following Google's guidelines and properly structuring your website for SEO, there's no need to rely on third-party tools. Especially for a site indexing. Google is the standard just follow there lead....

This is starting to become frustrating...
I'm beginning to think my keyboard is translating my typing into Croatian because the layout is set to Croatian so people don't understand what I'm saying... I could swear I'm typing in English...

YES, follow Google standards, always and all the time. I never said anything against that. But guess what (and this might come as a shocker) - you CAN optimize your site for OTHER search engines as well at the same time.

Think about it... Why use external software to index your site when you can submit it directly to the source? Skip the middleman and save yourself time and effort.

Can YOU think about it, please? What external software?! What middleman? Did you even bother to look at what indexNow is and how it works? IndexNow means you ARE submitting directly to the source, there's no middleman. Take a look at indexnow.org - they're only setting the standard and telling you how to submit to the source. Yes, there's a .com version acting as middleman, but nobody's talking about using them. Just look at WP and the difference between .org and .com

Have you heard about structured data? It did exist earlier, but schema.org was the turning point and we can say this was where it became a must-have. But using structured data doesn't mean you're not submitting any data schema.org - you're just following the standards THEY set, and Google and others accepted to use. Same with indexnow - Bing decided to accept so you'd be submitting your data directly to Bing using a standard they accept.

I don't understand why it is so difficult for some people to understand indexNow does NOT mean you're going against Google and nor does it mean it's some magic wand for your SEO - it's just a tool that might help you get better results with Bing. And as much as everyone seems to think Google is the only thing out there, newsflash: no it's not. Google does indeed dominate the search engine market, but Bing takes approx 11% share in Europe and approx 7% in US and CA. Now let's turn that into numbers: ~30M users in Europe and ~25M in US and CA. Let's just round it down to 50 million people. Well, call me greedy, but I'd love to dip my toes into such a market, especially if it would cost me absolutely nothing... Don't get me wrong, I'm super-duper happy for you if your business is doing so well that you can just walk away from such a potential market and say "meh, who cares..."

[chadlly2003]

This is starting to become frustrating...
I'm beginning to think my keyboard is translating my typing into Croatian because the layout is set to Croatian so people don't understand what I'm saying... I could swear I'm typing in English...

lol :)


I see what you're saying, and I agree—there’s no clear right or wrong here; it really comes down to personal preference. Honestly, I’m always up for a challenge and open to doing things a bit differently, so I don’t disagree with you at all. You’ve made some valid points.

[balihr]

Anyone interested in using this is welcome to download the plugin here. Feel free to use fake info to create an account if you wish, doesn't matter.

As soon as I manage to find some time to write the documentation, I'll submit this to the Plugins section. In the meantime, just drop the files into your zc_plugins directory and install using Plugin Manager.
Any new product or category added to catalog (from the admin, of course) will automatically be submitted to Bing. Any updates to an existing product or category - straight to Bing.

Suggestions welcome.

[pilou2]

This is starting to become frustrating...
I'm beginning to think my keyboard is translating my typing into Croatian because the layout is set to Croatian so people don't understand what I'm saying... I could swear I'm typing in English...

Tko zna? hm... Čekaj... Da, na hrvatskom je!

I hope the plugin will be ready soon, so that every ZC user can see another world than Google'one. ;)