Developers who want more room in Google’s Indexing API lost their instructions on Oct. 16, when Google deleted the approval form and the steps that pointed to it. Search Engine Journal reported the change on October 17. The documentation now describes the starting quotas but offers no route to ask for anything higher.
The edit follows our September coverage of job boards that said Google stopped responding to access requests for months. That report ended with a prediction: any shift in how Google handles these requests would probably show up first on the quota page or in the changelog. It did show up in the docs, though not in a form anyone asked for.
Google’s changelog says the quota page was revised “to reflect the current quota limits and process” and to “remove an outdated form.” That reads like housekeeping. It does not say whether the approval requirement has been dropped, relaxed, or simply moved. The entry also names only the quota page, even though the quickstart and usage pages changed on the same date.
The removals are specific. Before the edit, the quota page described the default allowance as meant for testing and said further use needed approval. A section on requesting quota linked to the form and warned that quota could rise or fall depending on document quality. The quickstart lost its approval step in the setup list, along with a paragraph weighing the API against sitemaps. The usage page shed three repeated notes about the testing allowance and the instructions for requesting approval.
Much remains. The quota page still lists a default of 200 publish requests per day for each project, counting both updates and deletions. Projects can also make 180 metadata requests per minute and 380 requests per minute across all endpoints, and the daily counter rolls over at midnight in the Pacific zone. Eligibility is unchanged: only pages with JobPosting markup, or BroadcastEvent markup embedded in a VideoObject, qualify. Spam policies still apply, and developers are told not to dodge limits by spreading submissions across several accounts.
A separate Google page, the job posting guide (last revised Sept. 8), continues to favor the Indexing API for job URLs and a sitemap for whole-site coverage. The guide and the trimmed quickstart now disagree in emphasis, since the quickstart no longer makes the comparison.
Practitioners on X reacted the same day, according to Search Engine Roundtable. Alexander Chukovski wrote that a new service account still receives the default 200 quota, and that the form is now visible only inside the console. Nick LeRoy, the consultant who raised the original complaints, said his testing tool returned a 200 status in the sandbox but a 404 from getMetadata, which he read as a sign the submission goes no further than the front of Google’s indexing pipeline. That matches the pattern job board operators described in September.
The gaps in the new docs are the real story. SEJ’s Matt G. Southern noted that the pages no longer explain how to apply, what becomes of requests already filed, or whether a project that never won approval can now rely on its starting allowance for job postings or livestream pages. Google’s changelog language answers none of those.
For job boards and other sites that depend on the API, the practical reading is cautious. A form that sat unanswered for months has vanished, and nothing in the documentation says whether that means the review path was replaced, retired, or left to be rewritten later. Without an official statement, teams cannot assume the default quota is now permanent, or that it covers production use.
Operators should read the quota shown in the Google API Console for each project and record it, along with the dates of any pending requests. Keep sitemap submissions running alongside the API, and watch the quota page and changelog for a new way to ask for more capacity.
Search Engine Journal, Matt G. Southern, published October 17, 2026, with additional detail from Search Engine Roundtable.
