Google has removed the approval form and the request-approval steps from its Indexing API documentation, in an update dated October 16. The docs still list the default quotas, but they no longer explain how a developer can ask for more.
Search Engine Journal reported the change on October 17, and Search Engine Roundtable reported the same edits across three pages: the quota page, the quickstart and the usage guide. Google’s own changelog says the quota page was updated to reflect the current quota limits and process and to remove an outdated form. The quota page still lists 200 publish requests per project per day, 180 metadata requests per minute and 380 requests per minute across all endpoints, resetting at midnight Pacific Time. The Indexing API itself is still limited to pages carrying JobPosting markup, or BroadcastEvent embedded in a VideoObject.
What Google has not said is whether the approval requirement itself has changed. That silence lands on top of a September report, also in Search Engine Journal, in which job board operators said they had waited months for answers to approval requests that never came. It is also why indexing news belongs alongside update coverage such as the September 2026 spam update — getting pages crawled is only half the job if Google’s quality systems then judge them.
For job boards and livestream publishers, the Indexing API is the fastest route into Google’s index, and the default 200-a-day quota is a testing allowance, not a production one. With the form gone, new projects have no documented path beyond it, and pending applicants have no word on applications already sent. Publishers watching how Google surfaces sources in AI answers — see our coverage of links moving higher in AI Overviews and AI Mode — now face the same open question at the other end of the pipeline: how content gets in at all. Until Google clarifies the process, developers can check their current quota in the Google API Console, where the quota page still points.
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