Google’s Indexing API can return two different answers about the same URL. Call the publish endpoint and you get HTTP 200. Call getMetadata for that identical URL, the endpoint Google says reports the last notification it received, and you get 404. Operators posted that pattern on Google’s help forum on September 2 and September 10; Nick LeRoy reported seeing it in July. No page tells you which answer to trust, or whether your approval request was ever granted.
Two Endpoints, One URL, Two Answers
Google’s own documentation defines the 200 narrowly. Per its usage page, “An HTTP 200 response means that Google may try to recrawl this URL soon.” It is a signal that a recrawl might follow, not confirmation that one happened. The getMetadata call is supposed to report back on that same URL. Several operators say it returns 404 instead.
The September 2 and September 10 forum posts describe the same behavior. The September 10 poster, a Belgian job board, saw the 404 through two separate setups. LeRoy, who runs SEOJobs.com and PPCJobs.com, said he’d found a similar pattern in July.
A Volunteer’s Theory, Not a Google Statement
The only explanation on record came from a Google Diamond Product Expert, who told the September 10 poster that the 404 was a strong sign the project hadn’t been approved, and that the initial 200 response can still be useful for testing a setup. That expert is a volunteer, not Google staff, and Search Engine Journal (SEJ) is explicit that a Product Expert’s reading isn’t an official Google statement. Google’s errors page describes 404 in generic terms and does not link it to approval status. SEJ asked Google whether requests are being reviewed and how long review takes; as of SEJ’s publication, Google had not responded.
What the Docs Still Say
The job posting structured data guide still recommends the API over sitemaps for job posting URLs, because the API “prompts Googlebot to crawl your page sooner,” while adding that Google still recommends a sitemap for coverage of an entire site. The quota and pricing page, updated mid-July, describes the 200-per-day-per-project default as being for “initial API onboarding and testing submissions,” with usage beyond that requiring “additional approval.” Neither the quickstart, the quota page nor the usage page describes a way to check whether a request is pending, approved, or rejected. The quota page does point to the Google API Console, but what that page shows is a project’s current quota.
What does an HTTP 200 from the Indexing API mean?
Per Google’s own documentation, an HTTP 200 response from the Indexing API “means that Google may try to recrawl this URL soon.” The API’s scope is narrow by design: Google says it can only be used to crawl pages carrying JobPosting structured data, or BroadcastEvent markup embedded in a VideoObject.
What Job Boards Report, and What Google Has Said
LeRoy describes requests that sit unanswered for months. In his July newsletter, six months after resubmitting requests for both sites, he wrote: “Not an approval. Not a rejection. Not a request for more information.” Consultant Alexander Chukovski says he’s had visibility over at least 50 applications since October 2025 and that none has gone through, adding that he has no inside information. The two “hypothesize that Google hasn’t approved any submissions” this year, LeRoy said in a September 19 thread on X, citing 100-plus job boards between them. LeRoy had already marked the limit of that claim in his July newsletter: “Can I confirm the number is zero? No.” John Mueller, replying on Bluesky in May, gave the closest thing to a Google response: he wasn’t aware of particular issues, but guessed Google was “a bit more cautious,” citing bloggers who try to pass as legitimate sites through the API. SEJ’s read: the reply doesn’t describe the review process.
Until There’s a Status Page, Treat HTTP 200 as a Receipt
An HTTP 200 from this API is a receipt for a transmission, not evidence a page got crawled. A dashboard or plugin showing a green check based on that response code is reporting the wrong thing, the same gap we flagged when a Search Console report logged numbers that didn’t match reality. Ground truth still lives in URL Inspection and the page-indexing report, not in whatever a plugin renders as success. Whether Googlebot is permitted to fetch a URL at all is separate ground, covered in our look at Cloudflare’s block setting and Googlebot.
None of the sources behind this story put a number on approval rates or review time, and Google, per SEJ’s reporting, hasn’t supplied one either. Until that changes, take the API’s success response as what Google itself says it is: a maybe, not a confirmation.
