A backlog is not new to search operators, but this one has no visible queue at all. Job board operators say the form that grants expanded access to Google’s Indexing API has gone quiet, leaving requests unanswered for months. Nick LeRoy, an SEO consultant who operates the job boards SEOJobs.com and PPCJobs.com, revived the complaint in a thread he posted to X on September 19, saying neither site has cleared approval or received a larger quota. The stakes are real: Google still points job posting sites toward the Indexing API rather than a standard sitemap, in the structured-data documentation it maintains for that content type.
LeRoy said that he and Alexander Chukovski, a fellow consultant to job boards, have combined data from what he called “100+ job boards as data points.” On that basis, the two “hypothesize that Google hasn’t approved any submissions in 2026,” though LeRoy frames it as a hypothesis, not a confirmed count. Describing his own resubmitted request, he wrote: “Not an approval. Not a rejection. Not a request for more information.” He followed with a caveat of his own: “Can I confirm the number is zero? No.”
Chukovski, who also consults with job boards on SEO, said in July that he had “visibility over at least 50 different applications” filed since October 2025, without a single one clearing review. He added that he holds no insider view into Google’s process.
Similar delays surface across the Google Search Central Community. One operator posted on May 22 that after multiple submissions spanning six to nine months, they had received no response and remained stuck on the default quota; a second board reported the identical experience on September 8. A poster on September 2 said their request carried no acknowledgment, no reference number, and no visible status at all, and a Belgian job board said on September 10 that a request filed August 21 was still without an approval or a rejection.
Google’s own quickstart guide describes why the distinction matters. It says the Indexing API “provides a default 200 quota for API onboarding and submission testing, and it requires additional approval for usage and resource provisioning.” The separate quota page offers little beyond one line, that access “may increase or decrease based on the document quality.” None of Google’s quickstart, quota, or usage documentation gives site owners any tool to see whether a pending submission has been approved or turned down.
John Mueller of Google addressed the delays in May, replying after LeRoy raised them on Bluesky: “I’m not aware of any particular issues, but I know the indexing API is inundated by bloggers trying to act like legitimate sites, so I imagine they’re just a bit more cautious nowadays.” That statement offers a possible motive for extra scrutiny. It says nothing about how long review takes or how an applicant might escalate a stalled request.
Search Engine Journal put a set of direct questions to Google, among them whether these requests are actually under review, what a normal wait looks like, and whether an applicant has any way to check where a submission stands. Google had not responded to any of it by the time the story published.
This is a separate access problem from the Google Business Profile API backlog covered earlier this month, a different Google product with its own approval pipeline, though both share the same operator complaint: a request form that produces silence instead of a decision. Several job board operators also describe a specific technical tell. A request to publish a URL comes back with an HTTP 200 status, yet a later check against the getMetadata endpoint for that same URL returns a 404. One Google Diamond Product Expert (a volunteer role, not an official Google spokesperson) told a poster that the 404 pattern was a strong signal the underlying project had never cleared approval.
Job boards still waiting should treat an HTTP 200 response from the Indexing API as nothing more than a receipt, not proof of indexing priority, and should keep sitemap submissions active rather than leaning on the API alone. Any shift in how Google judges these requests would most likely surface first on Google’s own quota page for the Indexing API, or in its documentation changelog, the same place where the 2024 update to the quota language was recorded.
Search Engine Journal, Matt G. Southern, published September 21, 2026.
