Search Engine Journal reported this month that job boards seeking Google Indexing API approval beyond the tool's default quota are waiting months for an answer, and often getting none at all.
Nick LeRoy, who runs SEOJobs.com and PPCJobs.com, resubmitted requests for both sites back in January and says he's had no approval, no rejection, and no request for more information since. Job board consultant Alexander Chukovski has tracked more than 50 separate applications since October 2025. Not one was approved.
In a September 19 forum thread, the two said they suspect Google hasn't approved a single submission in all of 2026, though LeRoy was careful to note he can't confirm the number is actually zero.
What Google Indexing API Approval Actually Requires
Google built the Indexing API for exactly two kinds of pages: postings marked up with JobPosting schema, and events using BroadcastEvent data inside a VideoObject. For a job board, that's the whole use case.
Listings often expire within days. Getting Googlebot to recrawl a new posting within minutes, instead of waiting on a sitemap crawl, decides whether a job shows up in search while it's still open.
Google's own documentation for the API caps the default quota at 200 publish requests a day, resetting at midnight Pacific time, and says quota may increase or decrease based on document quality.
It doesn't say who reviews a request, how long that review takes, or what document quality means in practice. Chukovski wrote on his own blog that there's no information on how Google evaluates who gets access, how long the evaluation takes, or whether a rejected applicant can appeal.
Google's John Mueller offered a partial explanation in May, saying the company is likely a bit more cautious nowadays after bloggers misused the API outside its intended scope.
That matches the pattern job board operators describe: a review process narrow enough for spam to clog it, with legitimate job sites stuck in the same backlog as the abuse it exists to catch.
Building Search Visibility That Doesn't Wait on One Queue
Waiting isn't a plan when the bottleneck sits inside a single vendor's internal review. LeRoy's advice, laid out on Job Board Secrets, is to stop treating each individual listing as the only route to search traffic.
He recommends building evergreen category pages instead: a running list of open roles in a given field that doesn't expire when one posting closes, and that a normal sitemap crawl finds without needing an API push at all.
It's close to the principle behind turning a school's existing pages into a steady stream of inquiries rather than chasing indexing speed. Pages that keep earning traffic on their own don't stall when one tool does.
The same logic holds outside job boards. A business whose visibility depends entirely on one company's internal process is exposed to whatever that company decides behind closed doors, on its own timeline.
A Google Business Profile presence doesn't wait on the same crawl queue an indexing API does, and neither does a newsletter list a business already owns.
For a law firm or dental practice deciding where next quarter's marketing budget goes, that's an argument for spreading spend across channels rather than betting the whole plan on one search tactic moving at Google's pace.
Our digital marketing and growth work starts from that same premise: build the channels you control first, then let the parts you don't control add to them instead of gating them.
Cover photo by Damien Lusson on Pexels
Sources
- Job Boards Say Google Indexing API Requests Get No Response — Search Engine Journal
- Requesting Approval and Quota | Indexing API Documentation — Google Search Central
