Google Removed the Indexing API Approval Form. Here’s What Job Sites Should Do Now

Say you run a job board and you applied for access to Google’s Indexing API months ago. You never heard back. Then one morning you open the docs to check on things, and the approval form is just… gone.

That’s what happened on October 16. Google quietly pulled the approval form and the instructions for requesting approval from its Google Indexing API documentation. Search Engine Journal spotted the change first. If your business depends on getting job listings or live videos into Google fast, here’s what changed, what didn’t, and how to plan around the uncertainty.

First, what is the Indexing API?

It’s a way to tell Google directly, “this page was just added, updated, or deleted,” instead of waiting for Google’s crawler to stumble across the change. Google only supports it for two kinds of pages: those with JobPosting markup and those with BroadcastEvent markup embedded in a VideoObject (think livestreams).

For a job board, speed matters. A listing that’s filled but still showing in search wastes everyone’s time, and a new listing that takes days to appear loses applicants.

What exactly disappeared from the docs

Before the update, Google’s quota page said the API came with a starter quota meant for testing, and that you needed extra approval to use it for real. There was a section called “Request quota and approval” with a link to the form. It also warned that your quota could go up or down depending on document quality.

All of that is now removed. Three other places were cleaned up too:

– The quickstart no longer lists “request approval and quota” as a setup step.
– The usage page dropped its repeated notes about the default quota being “for testing” and its instructions for requesting approval.
– The quickstart also lost its paragraph comparing the API with sitemaps.

Google’s changelog only mentions the quota page. It says the page was updated to reflect current limits and process, and that an outdated form was removed. It doesn’t say whether the approval requirement itself still exists.

What’s still there

The default limits are still listed, and they matter more than ever now that there’s no obvious way to ask for more:

– 200 publish requests per day per project (updates and removals both count)
– 180 metadata requests per minute
– 380 requests per minute across all endpoints
– The daily limit resets at midnight Pacific Time

Google’s spam policies still apply, and the docs still tell developers not to dodge the limits by using multiple accounts. Google’s job posting guide (last updated September 8) also still recommends using the API for job URLs, plus a sitemap to cover the rest of your site.

What nobody knows yet

This is the part that should make you cautious. The updated docs don’t say:

– How to apply for approval, if approval is still required
– What happens to requests people already submitted
– Whether a project that never got approved can now use its default quota for live job postings or livestreams

In a September report, job board operators said they’d waited months with no answer, and Google never published a review timeline. So the removal may be a cleanup of a form nobody was reading, or it may be a policy change. Right now it’s impossible to tell from the outside.

A quick example of why the limits matter

Imagine you run a job board that adds or changes about 500 listings a day. At 200 publish requests per day, you could notify Google about fewer than half of those changes through the API. The rest would depend on Google’s normal crawling. That’s why a sitemap and clean structured data are still part of the plan, not a backup you can skip.

What to do this week

1. Check your quota. Open the Google API Console and look at your project’s current quota. That’s the one place Google’s docs still point you to.
2. Keep your sitemap healthy. Google still recommends one alongside the API. Make sure it’s up to date and submitted in Search Console.
3. Don’t spread requests across extra accounts. It’s tempting if you’re hitting 200 a day, but Google’s docs explicitly call this out as something to avoid.
4. Prioritize what you send. If you’re capped, spend your daily requests on the changes that matter most: new listings and removals of filled jobs.
5. Watch the changelog. If Google adds a new way to request higher quota, that’s where it’ll likely show up first.
6. Don’t build your whole indexing strategy on the API. Treat it as a speed boost, not your only route into Google.

The bottom line

Google didn’t announce an end to the Indexing API, and the default limits still work as documented. But the removal of the approval process leaves real questions for anyone who applied and never heard back. Until Google says more, the safest move is to work within the default quota, keep your sitemap and structured data in good shape, and keep an eye on the docs.