The Indexing API allows any site owner to directly notify Google when pages are added or removed. This allows Google to schedule pages for a fresh crawl, which can lead to higher quality user traffic. Currently, the Indexing API can only be used to crawl pages with either job posting or livestream structured data. For websites with many short-lived pages like job postings or livestream videos, the Indexing API keeps content fresh in search results because it allows updates to be pushed individually.
Here are some of the things you can do with the Indexing API:
- Update a URL: Notify Google of a new URL to crawl or that content at a previously-submitted URL has been updated.
- Remove a URL: After you delete a page from your servers, notify Google so that we can remove the page from our index and so that we don't attempt to crawl the URL again.
- Get the status of a request: Check the last time Google received each kind of notification for a given URL.
- Send batch indexing requests: Reduce the number of HTTP connections your client has to make by combining up to 100 calls into a single HTTP request.
Sitemaps and the Indexing API
We recommend using the Indexing API instead of sitemaps because the Indexing API prompts Googlebot to crawl your pages sooner than updating the sitemap and pinging Google. However, we still recommend submitting a sitemap for coverage of your entire site.Get started
To use the Indexing API, follow the steps below.
- Complete the prerequisites by enabling the Indexing API, creating a new service account, verifying ownership in Search Console, and getting an access token to authenticate your API call.
- Send requests to notify Google of new, updated, or deleted web pages.
- You may need more quota than the default. To view your current quota and request more quota, see Quota.