Google Indexing API: How to get your content crawled faster!

If you’ve updated a post or want to spread some red-hot news, you depend on Google to index your content quickly. However, this can take a while – so you have to wait for traffic and a good ranking. Unless you use the Google Indexing API!

What does the Google Indexing API do?

Google’s indexing API gives you three key benefits:

• Your content ranks faster
• You increase your chances to rank ahead of the competition
• Updated posts are crawledfaster

So in summary, your website and new content will rank faster thanks to the API. You are telling Google to index or re-crawl a web page. You can use this to your advantage and leave the competition behind.

In addition, you can use the API to tell Google to remove deleted web pages of yours from the index (SERP’s). You can also check the request status. With this, you check when Google last received a notification about a URL.

Google itself, by the way, recommends using the API only for job searches and livestreams. However, SEO‘s quickly found out that the interface is also quite useful for other content.

In what cases does faster crawling make sense?

Before you go to the trouble of setting up the API for your website, you should know in which cases it will be useful for you. While the setup is relatively straightforward with our instructions, it still requires some time.

Spread your news faster

You run a news site? Or do you regularly inform your readers about news from your industry? Then it must often go fast with you! There’s been a new development or an important statement that you want to share with your readers as soon as possible. It’s just a shame that Google’s indexing is once again a long time coming …

If you want to distribute current news in a timely manner, the API will help you. As you learned in the previous chapter, the Indexing API will get your website crawled and indexed faster by Google.

If this happens much faster with you than with your competitors, you have done everything right and will be happy about powerful traffic and in the long run maybe even about more relevance / better rankings.

Updated posts are crawled faster

You should revise the content on your website regularly. Above all, updating blog posts is important to provide your readers with current and accurate information at all times.

In order for Google to recognize this innovation as quickly as possible, you can use the API. With this, the search engine crawls the page faster and captures the new content. This can improve your ranking and get you more traffic.

Instructions: How to create projects for the Indexing API

Before you can use the API, you need to enable access to it. For this you need the Google API Console, with which you create a corresponding project. Various settings and information about the access of the API are then summarized.

Step 1: Create a project

Such a project is quickly created – just follow this link and select the option “Create project“.

Step 2: Create a service account

Now enter a name and description for the service account. You can either use the default ID, or create your own number to help you keep your accounts separate. It is best to save the ID separately, as you will need it later.

In the next step you select a role and click on “Owner“. You still have the possibility to give other users access to this service account.

Then click on “Done”. Now you can create the API key by clicking on the three little dots under “Actions”.

Determine which key type you want to create and click “create”.

Step 3: Confirm ownership of your website

If you have not already done so, confirm your ownership. If you have already done this, you can proceed directly to step 4.

Otherwise, open Google Search Console and select “Properties” from the drop-down menu and then “AddProperty”. Add a “domain property”.

You must confirm this afterwards, which you do best directly. You will receive a detailed description of the individual confirmation steps. Run these and you’re done.

Step 4: Add service account as owner

Now open the Google Search Console again and select the confirmed property. Scroll down in the menu and select the item “Settings”.

Then click on “Users and permissions“. Your account will appear: Select the button on the right side of the screen.

A new tab will open where you scroll all the way down. Click on “Add owner”. Here you enter the ID, which you should copy or save in step 2.

Then refresh the first tab – here your service account should now be listed as the owner.

To set up the plugin

If you want to use the indexing API, you can simply install it on WordPress just like any other plugin. It’s even completely free.

Download the plugin here

Then open the WordPress dashboard and click on the “Plugins” tab in the left menu. You will then see a blue button “Upload Plugin” at the top. Now you can upload the indexing API plugin in zip format.

To configure the plugin

Once you have successfully installed the plugin, you still need to configure it. To do this, open the WordPress dashboard and select “Rank Math” from the menu on the left. In fact, the plugin for the API was developed by Rank Math.

There, select the item “Instant Indexing” and then the tab “Settings”. Either enter the content for your JSON file in the upper field, or upload it using the button below the field. Below that, you can specify which content is crawled by the Indexing API.

Important: Don’t forget to save your entries with the blue button at the bottom of the page!

Now you can start sending URLs to the API to be indexed directly. To do this, stay with “RankMath” in the WordPress dashboard and select the “Console” tab next to the settings at the top.

Under the heading “Instant Indexing” you will see a large field in which you can now enter one or more URLs that are to be indexed. You can enter up to 100 (!) URLs at once, below which you have the option of specifying what should happen to the URL:

• Update
• Remove
• Status query

Confirm your entry by clicking the “Send to API” button. After a few seconds, a green tick should appear with the word “Successful”.

As you can see, it’s not that hard to send instructions to the Indexing API. The result will be noticeable – especially if you want to spread news or update your blog posts. In both cases, we advise you to work with the API to get the best possible results.

Outrun your competition!

With the Indexing API, you have control over how quickly new or updated posts are crawled by you. Once the plugin is set up, you send queries to Google with just a few clicks. This way you’ll always be one step ahead of your competition and provide your readers with new content much faster. Feel free to let us know if our guide helped you. Good luck!