Google updates Indexing API quota guidance: eligibility comes first

Before budgeting an Indexing API submission, check whether the page is eligible. Google refreshed its quota documentation on October 16 and removed an outdated form. That documentation change does not increase the quota or make the API a general-purpose submission route for ordinary articles.

The request allowance has a defined scope

Google’s documentation changelog dates the refresh to October 16. The current quota page lists a default of 200 publish requests per project per day, covering both update and deletion notifications. The daily allowance resets at midnight Pacific Time. It also lists separate per-minute limits for metadata reads and all requests.

Read that allowance alongside the usage guide. Google restricts this API to pages with JobPosting or BroadcastEvent embedded in VideoObject. Batching reduces connections; it does not turn several URL notifications into one quota unit. A successful notification or metadata response does not prove completed indexing.

A planning example for an eligible publisher

Suppose a fictional jobs publisher plans 140 update notifications and 30 deletion notifications in one quota period. Under the documented default, those 170 notifications leave 30 requests before the daily limit. This arithmetic assumes no other publish requests use the same project and does not predict indexing.

Now suppose the same team adds 50 ordinary news pages to that plan. The first objection is eligibility. Extra allowance wouldn’t make those pages eligible for this API. Review the page type before calculating how to fit a queue into the remaining budget.

Keep acceptance and indexing in separate records

1. Record the page’s eligibility basis and canonical URL. If the page is outside the supported scope, use the appropriate ordinary discovery workflow.
2. Choose update or deletion based on the actual page state and retain the notification timestamp.
3. Track requests used by the whole project during the quota period, including other integrations.
4. Record the response and notification metadata as submission evidence.
5. Inspect crawl and index evidence separately, then investigate a gap at the stage where it appears.

A notification log can answer whether the service accepted a request. It cannot, by itself, answer whether Google indexed the current version or whether a searcher saw it. Preserve those questions in the workflow so a green API response cannot become an unsupported visibility claim.

Inspect the integration before changing it

For an existing jobs or livestream implementation, review the queue owner, project identity, reset boundary, and response handling. If several applications share a project, include their requests in the same budget. Avoid treating an isolated client counter as the project’s authoritative remaining allowance.

SearchEngineAnswer has not submitted URLs or run an indexing experiment for this article. The contribution is an eligibility-first planning method and a labeled arithmetic example. Use the technical SEO launch checks for ordinary delivery and discovery issues, and the UGC Fresh Data Program guide for that separate program’s eligibility rules.