Indexing API got ordinary pages indexed fast in a Reddit test

A site owner on r/TechSEO split a new 5,000-page programmatic cluster in two and pushed half of it through Google’s Indexing API. A week later, 94% of the API group was indexed, against 8.4% of the half submitted only through an XML sitemap, according to the Reddit thread. The poster says most of the API pages were crawled and indexed within 48 hours, and presents the method as a way out of “Discovered - currently not indexed”, the Search Console status for URLs Google knows about but has not crawled.

The pages in the test are the kind Google says the API is not for. Google’s Indexing API documentation states that the API “can only be used to crawl pages with either JobPosting or BroadcastEvent embedded in a VideoObject”, which means job listings and livestream videos. The same page sets a default quota of 200 for onboarding and testing and requires approval for more. It also says abuse, including using multiple accounts to exceed the quota, may get access revoked.

Fast indexing is not the same as staying indexed

The test covers one week. A week is long enough to show that the API gets URLs crawled quickly, and too short to show whether Google keeps them. The poster asks the subreddit the same thing, wondering whether API-indexed pages drop off more over three to six months than pages found through normal crawling.

Commenters who have used the API the same way answered from experience. One said they had done it for years and that the indexed URLs “will start dropping in the next couple of days,” with no penalty, and called it an authority issue. Another, who has run an automated submitter at 100 URLs per site per day for at least three years, said the API does get pages indexed but does nothing for rankings. That commenter described it as moving a URL “further up the queue” rather than bypassing the status, and said they know people Google banned from the API for overusing it.

Google’s John Mueller has already addressed this use. Search Engine Roundtable’s coverage from May 26, 2025 quotes Mueller: “We see a lot of spammers misuse the Indexing API like this, so I’d recommend just sticking to the documented & supported use-cases.” The same report says people who tried the API on unsupported content saw pages drop out of the index quickly after they were indexed.

The likelier explanation for the result is that the API speeds up the crawl and nothing more. A crawl request can put a URL in front of Googlebot sooner, but it does not change whatever made Google slow to crawl the sitemap group in the first place, and Google can still drop the pages once it has assessed them.

The post also describes a browser tool the poster built so their team can paste URLs and the key file instead of running Python scripts, and it ends with the name IndexPulse. The numbers come from someone with a tool to offer, and the thread gives no site, URLs, or screenshots to check them against.

What to do

• Keep the Indexing API for job postings and livestream pages. Send everything else through sitemaps and internal links, which is the documented route Mueller told people to stick to.
• Treat a programmatic cluster stuck in “Discovered - currently not indexed” as a question about the pages, not the submission method. The poster mentions orphan pages, so check that the cluster is linked from pages Google already crawls, and whether each page offers something the others do not.
• If you have already pushed ordinary pages through the API, judge the result by the indexed count months later, not after a week. Check in Search Console whether those URLs are still indexed.
• If you run a jobs or livestream site that uses the API as documented, the poster reports that the service account must be added in Search Console as an Owner. At the Full permission level, the API returned a 403 error.