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Ping SEO and RSS feeds: what pinging did, why Google switched its ping off, and what still gets a new page found

Pinging services and RSS submission were standard SEO tasks for blogs. Here is what each one did, what Google and Bing say about them now, and the modern methods that replaced them.

Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 21 October 2026

In SEO, "pinging" means sending an automatic notice to a search engine or update service saying that your site has new content. It was popular in the blog era, alongside submitting your RSS feed to feed directories. Today the picture is clear: Google retired its sitemap ping endpoint in 2023 and says unauthenticated pings were mostly spam, so pinging Google does nothing. What still works is a sitemap listed in robots.txt and Search Console, an accurate lastmod date, IndexNow for Bing and the other engines that support it, and your RSS feed, which Google accepts as a sitemap. This page explains each one and what to switch on.

What pinging was

When a blog published a post, its software sent a small XML-RPC message to an update service. The service passed the notice on to search engines and blog directories, which then came to crawl the new post. Ping-O-Matic, run by the WordPress Foundation, became the default hub because one ping reached many services. WordPress still ships this feature: its "Update Services" documentation (last updated 14 October 2026) says WordPress sends an XML-RPC ping each time you create or update a post, and lists rpc.pingomatic.com among the common ping services. You can find the list under Settings, Writing.

Sitemap pinging was the other form. The sitemaps protocol defined a plain web address you could request with your sitemap's URL attached, and search engines would fetch the sitemap.

SEO tools then spread "ping lists" of dozens of services to hit with every new URL. Ping-O-Matic's own page now shows only a few common services, says it checks that downstream services are legitimate and still work, and asks people to ping specialised services only when they are relevant.

What Google said in 2023

On 26 June 2023 Google's Search Central blog announced that the sitemaps ping endpoint was being deprecated and would stop working in six months. The post said Google's internal studies, and other search engines such as Bing, found unauthenticated sitemap submissions "not very useful", and that for Google Search "the vast majority of the submissions lead to spam". Requests to the old endpoint now return a 404. Google also said existing plugins that still ping will not cause problems; they simply do nothing useful.

The same post said what Google wants instead: submit sitemaps through robots.txt and Search Console, and keep the lastmod date accurate, because Google uses it as a signal for when to recrawl pages it already knows. It also warned that if your lastmod says a page changed yesterday when it changed years ago, Google will eventually stop believing your dates.

Where RSS still helps SEO

RSS feeds never ranked anything on their own, and feed directory submission is no longer a useful task. But the feed itself still has a job. Google's sitemap documentation says that if your CMS generates an RSS or Atom feed, you can submit the feed's URL as a sitemap. Google accepts RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0, and mRSS for video details. The same page notes the limit: a feed only lists recent URLs. So the strong setup is both:

  • A full XML sitemap with every page you want indexed, which tells Google what exists.
  • Your RSS or Atom feed submitted as a second sitemap, which tells Google quickly what is new, because the CMS updates it the moment you publish.

Feeds also help people and other sites. Feed readers, newsletter tools and some aggregators pull from RSS, and each of those can bring visits and mentions. That is the real RSS benefit now: distribution, with indexing help as a bonus.

IndexNow: the ping that does work, outside Google

IndexNow is the modern version of the ping idea, with one difference that matters: you prove you own the site with a key file, so the notice can be trusted. You send the URL of any page you have added, updated or deleted, and the IndexNow FAQ says the submission is shared with all participating engines. Its documentation lists endpoints for Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yep and Amazon. Google is not on that list.

The IndexNow FAQ lists WordPress, Shopify, Wix, GoDaddy, Duda, Joomla and Drupal among platforms with native support or plugin support, and Cloudflare among CDNs. On most sites it is a switch in an SEO plugin or CDN dashboard rather than code. For the Bing side in detail, see our guide on how to get a site indexed on Bing, including IndexNow.

Old method and its replacement

Old taskStatus nowDo this instead
Ping Google's sitemap endpointRetired; returns 404Sitemap line in robots.txt, submitted once in Search Console
Ping lists of 50+ servicesMost services are goneLeave WordPress's default ping in place or clear it; it costs nothing
Submit RSS to feed directoriesNo SEO valueSubmit the feed in Search Console as a sitemap
Ping BingReplaced by IndexNowTurn on IndexNow in your plugin, CMS or CDN
Re-ping old pages to look freshCounted against your datesChange lastmod only when the page really changes

A ten minute setup for a new site

  1. Check that your CMS creates an XML sitemap, and add a Sitemap: line with its full address to robots.txt.
  2. Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
  3. Find your RSS or Atom feed address in your CMS settings or documentation and submit it as a second sitemap in Search Console.
  4. Turn on IndexNow in your SEO plugin or CDN.
  5. Check that your sitemap's lastmod dates match real edits. If your CMS stamps every page with today's date, fix that setting.
  6. For an urgent single page on Google, use URL Inspection in Search Console and request indexing.

If your sitemap tool rebuilds the file by hand, switch to one that updates on publish. Our comparison of XML sitemap generators explains why that matters more than the tool's name.

Questions about ping SEO and RSS

Is pinging still useful for SEO?

Not for Google, which retired its ping endpoint in 2023. For Bing and other engines, IndexNow is the trusted replacement. A WordPress update ping does no harm, but it is not where indexing speed comes from.

Can too much pinging hurt a site?

Google said leftover pings to its old endpoint cause no problems. Ping-O-Matic itself asks people to ping only services relevant to their blog, so mass pinging is wasted effort and a burden on the services.

Does an RSS feed improve rankings?

No. It helps search engines find new posts faster when submitted as a sitemap, and it helps readers and aggregators follow you. Rankings come from the pages themselves.

Should I submit both a sitemap and a feed to Google?

Yes, if your CMS makes both. The sitemap lists everything; the feed flags what is new.

Does IndexNow tell Google about my pages?

No. Google is not among the engines listed by IndexNow. Use Search Console for Google.

Getting found by the engines that do not crawl on request

Pings, feeds and IndexNow all solve one problem: making sure a search index knows a page exists. Assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity add a second problem. They read many sources and then decide which businesses to mention, and a page being indexed does not mean it is the one they quote. Checking that takes a different kind of test, asking the assistants real questions and reading the answers. AI Knows Us runs those questions for your business and shows which of your pages, if any, the answers were built from.

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