News & analysis
Google Quietly Drops How-To For Indexing API Approval
Google removed the Indexing API approval form and related instructions from its documentation on Oct. 16, without saying whether the approval requirement itself has changed.
By Roomer Editorial · · 3 min read
What did Google remove from the Indexing API docs?
Google pulled the approval form and the instructions for requesting it from its Indexing API documentation on Oct. 16. The changelog says the update was meant to reflect current quota limits and process, and to remove an outdated form. It does not say whether developers still need approval to get higher usage.
Before the update, the quota page said the API provides a default quota for testing and requires additional approval for usage and resource provisioning. A section called "Request quota and approval" linked to the form and noted that quota could rise or fall based on document quality. Both are gone now.
The quickstart page no longer lists "Request approval and quota" as a setup step. The usage page dropped three identical notes about the testing-only default quota and how to request more. Both pages carry the same Oct. 16 date, but the changelog only mentions the quota page by name.
What's the current quota, and who can use the API?
The default limits are still published. Each project gets 200 publish requests per day, covering both updates and removals, plus 180 metadata requests per minute and 380 requests per minute across all endpoints combined. The daily cap resets at midnight Pacific Time.
The API still only covers pages marked up with JobPosting or BroadcastEvent inside a VideoObject. That second category is the one relevant to anyone publishing livestream video content with structured data, not just job boards. Google's spam policies apply to every submission, and the usage page repeats its warning against working around limits, including by using multiple accounts.
Google's job posting guide, last updated Sept. 8, still tells developers to use the Indexing API over sitemaps for job URLs and to keep a sitemap for full-site coverage. The quickstart used to compare the two methods; that comparison paragraph is gone.
What happens to pending approval requests?
Unclear, per the source. Job board operators reported in September that they had waited months without any update on their requests, and the documentation gave no review timeline then or now.
The rewritten docs don't explain how to submit a new application, what happens to applications already in the queue, or whether a project that never got approval can now use its default quota for live job postings or livestreams. None of those questions are answered in the current documentation.
You can still check a project's live quota in the Google API Console, which the quota page continues to link to. Keep watching that page and the changelog for any new way to request a higher quota.
Roomer Editorial's take
This is a documentation story, not a travel story on its face. But the BroadcastEvent clause is the one creators should clock. If you're structuring data around a livestream — a festival announcement, a flight deal drop, a destination event you're covering live — this is the mechanism Google uses to fast-track that page into its index.
The removal of the approval instructions without a replacement process is a bad sign for anyone who submitted a request and is still waiting. Google didn't say the requirement is gone. It just stopped telling you how to meet it. Treat that as a pause, not a green light to assume your project can skip approval and use the default quota for anything beyond testing.
The practical move is to keep your sitemap doing the heavy lifting for normal indexing, and not restructure your publishing workflow around an API whose access process Google just made opaque. If you're not already running structured data for live events, this isn't the week to build a pipeline around it.
Action: If you have a pending Indexing API approval request, check your quota directly in the Google API Console rather than waiting on an email, and don't assume silence means approval.
Source: Google.
