On 16 October 2026 Google removed the Indexing API approval form and every line of documentation explaining how to ask for approval. The quota did not move. Every project still gets 200 publish requests a day, and the API still accepts only pages with JobPosting or BroadcastEvent markup. If your site is not a job board and does not publish livestreams, nothing about your work changed last week.
What Google removed
Three pages changed together. The quota page lost the section called Request quota and approval, along with the sentence saying the API requires additional approval for usage and provisioning. The quickstart stopped listing approval as a setup step. The usage page dropped three notes that described the default quota as being for testing, plus the instructions beside them.
| Page | What it said before 16 October 2026 | What it says now |
| Quota and pricing | The API requires additional approval for usage and resource provisioning, with a form to request it | Default limits and a link to the API Console |
| Quickstart | Request approval and quota, listed as a first setup action | No approval step |
| Using the API | Three notes describing the default quota as being for testing, with approval instructions | The notes and instructions are gone |
| Changelog | Not applicable | Says the quota page was updated to reflect the current limits and process, and to remove an outdated form |
The changelog does not say whether approval is still required. It says the page was updated and an outdated form was removed. That is the whole announcement, and it leaves the obvious question open: what a project does when it needs more than 200 requests a day.
What did not change
The limits are still published, and they are still small. A project gets 200 publish requests a day across both updates and deletions, 180 metadata requests a minute, and 380 requests a minute across all endpoints. The daily count resets at midnight Pacific Time. Use of the API is free.
| Limit | Value |
| Publish requests per project per day | 200, counting URL_UPDATED and URL_DELETED |
| Metadata requests per minute | 180 |
| All requests per minute | 380 |
| Reset time | Midnight Pacific Time |
| Eligible content | Pages with JobPosting or BroadcastEvent inside a VideoObject |
| Cost | None |
The eligibility rule is the part people skip. The Indexing API was built for two content types that go stale faster than a sitemap can keep up: job ads that expire and livestreams that start. It was never a general-purpose way to push blog posts into Google. A lot of the frustration around approval comes from people asking for quota on content the API does not accept in the first place.
Which route to use for which page
Pick by content type rather than by preference. The wrong route is why sites wait months for a decision that would not have helped them.
| Content | Route | Why |
| Job postings | Indexing API, with a sitemap for everything else | Google’s own JobPosting guide, last updated 8 September 2026, still recommends the API over sitemaps for these URLs |
| Livestreams with VideoObject markup | Indexing API | BroadcastEvent is the other accepted type |
| Blog posts, product pages, category pages | Sitemap plus internal links | The API does not accept them, and 200 requests a day would not cover them |
| A handful of urgent URLs | URL Inspection in Search Console | Manual, one URL at a time, and it is the one submission route Google still documents |
| Mass removal of dead URLs | 410 status, then let recrawl happen | Faster than asking for deletions, and it needs no quota |
Why this matters if you run a job board
In September, Search Engine Journal reported that job board operators had waited months for a reply to their approval requests, with no timeline published anywhere. Those requests now have no documented destination. A project that never received approval cannot tell from the documentation whether it may use its default quota on live job postings. It also cannot find out what happens to the application it already sent.
My read is that Google stopped processing the form. Approval itself did not disappear. A company that has decided to grant more quota keeps a form. A company that has decided the process was unmanageable removes the page and says nothing about what replaces it.
There is a second reading, and it is friendlier. The default quota may simply be the whole offer now, and approval may have stopped existing. If that is true, the 200 requests a day is the ceiling for everybody, and the API is a tool for small job boards rather than large ones. Both readings fit the documentation. Neither is confirmed.
What I would do this week
- Open the API Console and screenshot your project’s current quota. It is the only number that is actually about your account, and it is what you will be asked for if the process comes back.
- Count how many URLs you actually need to push per day. Most sites that want more quota need it for pages the API does not accept.
- If you run a job board, confirm your JobPosting markup validates before you worry about quota. A rejected request spends the same 200 as a good one.
- Keep the sitemap current for everything the API cannot carry. That is the route that never gets closed.
Step one takes a minute. The rest only matters if the first answer is a number near 200.
The part I would push back on
The documentation change is being read as a policy change, and Google has not said that. The company has form here. In September 2024 it rewrote the same testing language to explain that the default quota is for initial setup, and the limits did not move then either. Documentation edits are cheap, and they often describe a cleanup rather than a decision.
What would count as a real change is a number. If Google raises the default daily quota, or publishes a replacement route for requesting more, that is policy. Until then, treat the 16 October 2026 edit as a page losing a broken link, and plan around 200 requests a day.
If you are deciding how much of your indexing work to automate at all, the argument in why most SEO tests cannot fail applies here too. Being indexed is not the same as being quoted. If the second is your goal, the note on why blog posts never show up in AI answers covers the part that indexing cannot fix. The documentation dates and quotes come from Search Engine Journal’s report of 17 October 2026, and the limits from Google’s quota page.
