Job boards say Google's Indexing API is not answering approval requests, and one SEO consultant has 50 applications waiting since October 2025

Search Engine Journal reported on 21 September 2026 that job-site operators have been waiting six to nine months for Google to approve their applications to use the Indexing API, and that one SEO consultant tracking more than 50 requests has recorded no approval since October 2025. Matt G. Southern, writing at SEJ, cites forum posts from a Belgian job board that submitted on 21 August and got no response by 10 September, and from a consultant named LeRoy who resubmitted in July after an earlier six-month wait produced nothing.

What the API is meant to do

Google published the Indexing API in 2018 and lists two supported page types on its documentation: pages with JobPosting structured data and pages with BroadcastEvent markup embedded in a VideoObject. The point of it is that these pages come and go quickly, so waiting for a crawl to notice a change wastes both Googlebot cycles and the site's users. A working request tells Google that a specific URL has been added, updated or removed, and the URL then goes through indexing on its own schedule.

Access needs an approval step, which Google's documentation does not attach a review timeframe to. Applicants send a form and wait. Southern quotes John Mueller of Google, from May 2026, saying "I imagine they're just a bit more cautious nowadays" and referring to the earlier problem of non-job-site owners misusing the API to push regular pages into the index. Mueller did not offer a current review time or a way to check the status of a submission.

The silent failure mode

The Indexing API returns HTTP 200 for months on requests from an unapproved account, so the sending code reads every call as a success. The follow-up call to the metadata endpoint returns 404 for a URL the API had just accepted, which is the only signal that the account is still waiting for review. A site can integrate against the documentation, deploy it, and only realise the integration is inert when JobPosting pages do not appear in Google's Job Search feature.

Two things a team should change

For a team building a job board, an events site, or any product whose search plan depends on rapid indexing, the story means the Indexing API is now a feature Google publishes without staffing the approval queue behind it. Two things follow. First, keep the XML sitemap for job pages current and update it on every job posting change, because the API cannot be relied on to notify Google faster. Second, do not confuse a 200 response from Google's API with the request having been accepted for indexing. Add a call to the metadata endpoint on a known URL to the deployment health check, and treat a 404 there as an authentication failure.

Source

Matt G. Southern, Search Engine Journal, Job Boards Say Google Indexing API Requests Get No Response, 21 September 2026. Google's own Indexing API documentation lists the supported page types.