Google Indexing API Usage and Test Results with Node.js
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2024 7:44 am
APIs are now used quite frequently in every aspect of our lives and in our work. I wanted to provide information about Google Indexing API and share my views in this article, especially for those interested in technical SEO.
For Google, it was particularly negative for job postings or live broadcasts to be closed before they were indexed by the site. The job posting page was indexed; however, it could take a long time to be included in the index. During this process, since the applications were very high, visitors could not find exactly what they were looking for. For this reason, the Indexing API was first announced on June 26, 2018 and it was announced that it was only suitable for pages using the Job Posting schema .
I made the API connection using Node.js; but you can also connect with other supported types. I did all the operations through my personal blog to access the data more easily.
What is Google Indexing API?
Google Indexing API is a free API type developed to include sites with short-lived content, such as job postings or live broadcast videos, in the Google index.
Google Indexing API is one of the effective ways to get your pages crawled faster. You can only do this for the Console properties you own. Bing also has a “URL and Content Submission API” feature. Moreover, I can say that its limits are greater than Google. If you are interested in Bing, I can definitely recommend you to review the details here .
If you publish job postings in a specific section of your site, if your entire site is a job posting, and if you produce content related to live broadcasts, I recommend that you include the use of the job seekers database Indexing API in your SEO plans. Of course, I also recommend that you support these pages with structured data .
Pages sent via API may actually be more useful to Google than sitemaps . Google tries to achieve maximum efficiency by consuming less resources:
What Can You Do With Google Indexing API?
With the Indexing API you can quickly perform the following operations:
URL update: Requesting that content you’ve updated be recrawled or requesting that new content be added to the index.
URL removal: This method lets you notify Google more quickly about pages you’ve deleted from your site. Your deleted URLs can then be removed from the index over time.
Get the status of a request: Check when Google last received each type of notification for a particular URL.
Send bulk indexing requests: Reduce the number of HTTP connections your client needs to establish by combining up to 100 calls into a single HTTP request.
There are quota limits for both URL_UPDATED and URL_DELETED operations:
How to Set Up Google Indexing API?
The installation process may seem a bit complicated, so I will try to explain it step by step.
Creating an Indexing API Project
First, create a new project for Indexing API on Google Cloud :
If you see a screen like the one below, you have successfully created the project:
Then you need to click on the link here and create a new service account. Don't forget to select the last project you created. I left the name as "my project":
After clicking the “+create service account” button, a screen like the one below appears. You can write the account name and other sections as you wish. The description section is not mandatory, you can fill that section out if you wish.
For Google, it was particularly negative for job postings or live broadcasts to be closed before they were indexed by the site. The job posting page was indexed; however, it could take a long time to be included in the index. During this process, since the applications were very high, visitors could not find exactly what they were looking for. For this reason, the Indexing API was first announced on June 26, 2018 and it was announced that it was only suitable for pages using the Job Posting schema .
I made the API connection using Node.js; but you can also connect with other supported types. I did all the operations through my personal blog to access the data more easily.
What is Google Indexing API?
Google Indexing API is a free API type developed to include sites with short-lived content, such as job postings or live broadcast videos, in the Google index.
Google Indexing API is one of the effective ways to get your pages crawled faster. You can only do this for the Console properties you own. Bing also has a “URL and Content Submission API” feature. Moreover, I can say that its limits are greater than Google. If you are interested in Bing, I can definitely recommend you to review the details here .
If you publish job postings in a specific section of your site, if your entire site is a job posting, and if you produce content related to live broadcasts, I recommend that you include the use of the job seekers database Indexing API in your SEO plans. Of course, I also recommend that you support these pages with structured data .
Pages sent via API may actually be more useful to Google than sitemaps . Google tries to achieve maximum efficiency by consuming less resources:
What Can You Do With Google Indexing API?
With the Indexing API you can quickly perform the following operations:
URL update: Requesting that content you’ve updated be recrawled or requesting that new content be added to the index.
URL removal: This method lets you notify Google more quickly about pages you’ve deleted from your site. Your deleted URLs can then be removed from the index over time.
Get the status of a request: Check when Google last received each type of notification for a particular URL.
Send bulk indexing requests: Reduce the number of HTTP connections your client needs to establish by combining up to 100 calls into a single HTTP request.
There are quota limits for both URL_UPDATED and URL_DELETED operations:
How to Set Up Google Indexing API?
The installation process may seem a bit complicated, so I will try to explain it step by step.
Creating an Indexing API Project
First, create a new project for Indexing API on Google Cloud :
If you see a screen like the one below, you have successfully created the project:
Then you need to click on the link here and create a new service account. Don't forget to select the last project you created. I left the name as "my project":
After clicking the “+create service account” button, a screen like the one below appears. You can write the account name and other sections as you wish. The description section is not mandatory, you can fill that section out if you wish.