Index aliases in Elasticsearch offer a powerful way to abstract physical indices by exposing only logical indices to users, enabling seamless mapping changes and scaling without downtime or reindexing. With Elasticsearch version 1.1.0, creating, modifying, and deleting aliases has become more straightforward, and aliases can now be specified during index creation as well as when registering index templates. This is particularly useful for time-based data, allowing for the automatic addition of indices to relevant aliases. Additionally, aliases can include routing keys and filters, and the {index} placeholder allows dynamic alias naming during index creation. While there are limitations, such as using only the entire index name in aliases, ongoing improvements are guided by community feedback and contributions, such as those from James Brook.