What is the Google Indexing API?

What is the Google Indexing API?

The Google Indexing API is a Google Cloud service that allows websites to notify Google when a page is added, updated, or removed. Instead of waiting for Googlebot to discover your content through its regular crawl schedule, you push a direct request that puts your URL in the indexing queue immediately.

Technically, Google designed the API for pages with JobPosting or BroadcastEvent structured data. But in practice, it works for all page types and is widely used by SEOs and developers to speed up indexing across entire sites.

How does it work?

The API uses Google Cloud authentication. You create a service account in Google Cloud Platform, grant it Owner permission in Google Search Console for your domain, then use the service account credentials to send authenticated requests to the API.

Each request tells Google either:

• URL_UPDATED — this page was added or changed, please crawl it
• URL_DELETED — this page no longer exists, remove it from the index

Google typically processes these requests within minutes to a few hours, compared to days or weeks via organic crawling.

What are the limits?

The default quota is 200 URL requests per day per project. For most websites this is plenty — if you're publishing more than 200 pages per day you can apply to Google for a quota increase.

There's also a per-minute rate limit of 600 requests, so burst submissions (like a bulk resubmit of your entire site) need to be throttled.

Does the Google Indexing API guarantee indexing?

No. Submitting a URL tells Google to crawl it — it doesn't guarantee the page will be indexed. Google may crawl the page and decide not to index it due to thin content, duplicate content, noindex tags, or other quality signals. The API speeds up discovery; it doesn't override Google's quality filters.

How to use it with HubSpot

Setting up the Google Indexing API manually requires creating a GCP project, enabling the API, creating a service account, downloading a JSON key, and building or configuring a submission mechanism. It's achievable but takes time.

The easier route for HubSpot users is the Google Indexing for HubSpot app, which handles authentication and automatic submission every time you publish a page.

For a full walkthrough: How to submit HubSpot pages to Google automatically.