How Automatic Submissions Work
InstaIndex streamlines the process of keeping your Shopify store's content up-to-date in search engine indexes by leveraging the IndexNow protocol. Understanding how automatic submissions function can help you understand the efficiency and benefits the app provides.
The Purpose of IndexNow
Traditionally, search engines discover website updates by periodically crawling sitemaps, which can delay the indexing of new content. The IndexNow protocol overcomes this limitation by allowing websites to proactively notify search engines of changes. This "push" mechanism ensures that search engines become aware of updates in real time, leading to faster crawling and indexing of your content.
Automatic Submissions with InstaIndex
InstaIndex automatically submits your store's URLs to all supported search engines—Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz, and Yep—every time you add, update, or delete a product, collection, blog post, or page. This automation means you don't have to manually inform search engines of changes, saving you time and ensuring your content is quickly recognized.
Real-Time and Batch Submissions
- Products and Collections: Updates are submitted in real time, thanks to Shopify's webhooks that notify InstaIndex instantly when changes occur.
- Blog Posts and Pages: Due to Shopify API limitations, updates to these content types are submitted every 10 minutes in batches. This slight delay still ensures timely notification to search engines.
Support for Shopify Markets
InstaIndex includes built-in support for Shopify Markets, ensuring that your localized content reaches the appropriate audiences across different regions and languages.
How It Works
- Localized URLs Submission: When you configure multiple markets or languages in Shopify, InstaIndex automatically submits all the localized URLs for your products and collections along with the primary URL. This means customers searching in different languages or regions can discover your products more easily.
- Respecting Market Availability: If you make a product or collection unavailable in a particular language or market, InstaIndex recognizes this setting and will not submit the URL for that unpublished market or language. This ensures that only the content you intend to be available in specific regions is submitted to search engines.
Meaningful Submissions Feature
To improve the quality of submissions, InstaIndex includes a feature called Meaningful Submissions, which is enabled by default. This feature compares the current content with the previously saved version before submitting a URL, ensuring that only changes of SEO significance trigger a submission.
This is especially beneficial for stores that sync products from third-party sources. Such syncing may update all products, but not all changes are significant (e.g., if the content or price hasn't changed). Meaningful Submissions ensures that only products with actual changes in content, price, or other publicly visible data are submitted, preventing unnecessary notifications to search engines.
Why Existing URLs Aren't Submitted Upon Installation
You might wonder why InstaIndex doesn't submit all your existing URLs immediately after installation. IndexNow is designed to notify search engines about changes in real time. Submitting unchanged URLs is considered misuse of the protocol and may lead to penalties from search engines. By adhering to these best practices, InstaIndex helps you build a stronger, more credible SEO foundation for your store. Rest assured, any new changes moving forward will be automatically submitted on your behalf.
To help search engines discover your existing content, we recommend submitting your sitemap. Your sitemap provides a comprehensive overview of all your site's URLs, allowing search engines to crawl and index existing content at their own pace while InstaIndex handles real-time updates.
Summary
InstaIndex's automatic submission feature ensures that your Shopify store's updates are promptly communicated to major search engines, enhancing your online visibility. By leveraging the IndexNow protocol, supporting Shopify Markets, and utilizing features like Meaningful Submissions, InstaIndex provides an efficient and compliant way to keep your content fresh in search results.
If you have any questions or need assistance with automatic submissions or any other feature of InstaIndex, please don't hesitate to contact our support team—we're here to help!