An SEO professional was worried about using the instant indexing API. They read the documentation and noticed that it is relevant for jobs.
However, someone in a Google help community explained that it could possibly be used for news.
They asked if it is okay to use this for news.
The second part of their question is – they publish a story, then they unpublish it. Then they republish it during editing, and then they finally publish it.
Is this process a concern?
John said that the indexing API is not relevant for news, and that it is really intended for job posts.
He expounded that it is also quite limited in terms of the URLs you can send to the API, so it shouldn’t change anything for news very much.
John also added that yes, with the API you will see Google crawl the URL very quickly, because they need to pick up the structured data in order to understand if this is a job posting or not.
So, on the crawling side you should see a change, but John does not expect to see a change on the indexing side.
He also emphasized that there is no penalty for using the indexing API for news if you just so happen to use it that way.
This happens at approximately the 32:59 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 5 32:59
Okay. And one follow up as well. Um, we are considering doing the instant API where we update to- the documentation says that that’s relevant for jobs, but someone also in the same community. I think there was another question. And they alluded if it can be used for news. Is it okay to use for news, we have been using it. And the second part is, sometimes when we do use it, we publish a story, then we unpublish it. And then we republish it during the editing phase, and then we finally publish it. So is that a concern? And is that API relevant for news?
John 33:35
It’s not really relevant for news, it is really meant for job based content. And I believe it’s also quite limited in terms of how many URLs you can send there, by default, so I would not assume that that changes anything for news.
SEO Professional 5 33:56
We did notice, oddly enough, that when we did it, we indexed a bit faster than if we just wait for the crawler to come around based on the sitemap and [inaudible]. This is anecdotal, but we did. I mean, we did notice that after a minute or two, which is kind of strange. But again, if it hits the limit on the number of queries per day or the API limits, I guess it wouldn’t really work for large numbers.
John 34:21
Yeah. I think what you would definitely see is that we will crawl the URL very quickly, because we need to pick up the structured data to understand if this is actually a job posting or not. So the crawling side, you should probably see a change, but I don’t expect to see a change on the indexing side for that. But it’s also something where from our point of view, it’s not that we would penalize a site for doing this. So, no.
