Glossary
Plain-English definitions for indexing, crawling, and AI-search terms.
BroadcastEvent schema
Structured data for live event pages, the other officially supported API content type.
BroadcastEvent marks a page as a live or replayable broadcast (stream, sports, concert, conference). Alongside JobPosting, it is one of only two content types Google officially supports through the Indexing API, which is why livestream pages can be pushed for near-instant crawling. In markup it is typically embedded inside a VideoObject via the publication property, with isLiveBroadcast, startDate, and endDate describing the stream. Pushing the URL through the Indexing API near the event start time helps Google surface the page in live broadcast carousels.
Canonical URL
The version of a page Google should treat as the single source of truth.
When several URLs serve the same or similar content, the rel=canonical link tag tells Google which one to index and pass link equity to. Misconfigured canonicals are among the most common reasons pages don't rank, so audit yours before pushing anything through the Indexing API.
Core Web Vitals
Google's user-experience metrics: LCP, INP, and CLS.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Poor CWV scores track with lower ranking and can tip pages into Crawled-not-indexed. The Audit tool reports CWV from PageSpeed Insights.
Crawl budget
How many of your URLs Google bothers to fetch in a time window.
Larger or higher-authority sites get more crawl budget. Sites carrying lots of low-quality URLs burn it on pages that will never rank. Pushing high-priority URLs through the Indexing API is how you point that budget where you want it.
Crawled, currently not indexed
Google fetched your page and decided not to add it to the index.
A Search Console coverage state meaning Google crawled the URL and the quality classifier turned it down. Usual causes: thin content, near-duplicates, low site authority, or cannibalization with stronger pages. Pushing through the Indexing API won't fix this. The page itself has to change.
Credit
One paid unit of work: one indexer push, one status check, or one audit.
Credits live in your wallet for a year from purchase and get spent automatically once your free daily quota runs dry. $2.99 buys a 50-credit pack, spendable on anything metered — indexing, status checks, audits, site reports and AI citation checks.
Discovered, currently not indexed
Google knows the URL exists but hasn't crawled it yet.
The URL sits in Google's crawl queue but hasn't been fetched. This is the case the Indexing API helps with most, since pushing the URL moves it up the queue. Common on new sites, low-authority domains, and URLs that haven't earned internal or external links.
Hreflang
Annotations that tell Google which language/region a page targets.
Hreflang tags help Google serve the right locale variant of your page to the right user. Missing self-references and asymmetric annotations are where it usually goes wrong. See the multi-region playbook.
Indexability audit
A per-URL deep dive: status, canonical, robots, structured data, Core Web Vitals.
IndexerNow's Audit tool folds URL Inspection, PageSpeed Insights, fetched HTTP status, canonical tag inspection, and structured-data checks into one report. Run it before you push, and before you buy backlinks.
Indexing API
Google API that signals a URL is new or updated, prompting a re-crawl.
Google's Indexing API lets you notify Google when a URL is added, removed, or substantially changed. Officially supported for JobPosting and BroadcastEvent content, and widely used as a strong 'please crawl' hint for any URL. Hard cap of 200 publish requests per project per 24 hours.
JobPosting schema
Structured data type required for Google for Jobs eligibility.
JobPosting is one of two content types Google officially supports through the Indexing API (the other is BroadcastEvent). Pages with valid JobPosting schema can appear in the Google for Jobs experience and get faster indexing through API pushes.
OAuth
The authorization standard IndexerNow uses to call Google APIs as you.
OAuth 2.0 lets IndexerNow act on your behalf for specific scopes (Search Console read-only plus the Indexing API). We never see your password, and you can pull access any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
PageSpeed Insights
Google's free tool for analyzing page performance and Core Web Vitals.
PageSpeed Insights (PSI) runs a Lighthouse audit and returns CWV field data when available. The IndexerNow Audit tool calls PSI as part of its full per-URL analysis.
Pre-check
A free pre-batch check that shows Google's current verdict per URL.
Before you spend credits on a 50-URL batch, the Pre-check runs URL Inspection over each one and flags the URLs already indexed (drop them) and the blocked ones (fix them). Saves credits, catches problems early.
Quota
The number of API calls allowed per time window.
Two levels. Google's hard limits: 200 indexing publishes per project per day, 2,000 URL inspections per property per day. IndexerNow's per-user quotas: 15 free indexer, 20 free status, 20 free audits per day, rising to 50 / 2,000 / 10,000 on Power and Agency, plus 150 credit spend per day.
Refresh token
Long-lived credential that lets IndexerNow call Google APIs without re-prompting you.
Once you complete OAuth, Google issues a refresh token that we store encrypted at rest. It's tied to your Google account and our OAuth client, so it's useless on its own. Deleting your IndexerNow account removes it.
Request indexing (Search Console)
The 'Request indexing' button in Search Console's URL Inspection.
Same underlying machinery as the Indexing API, but manual, one URL at a time, and rate-limited to roughly a dozen requests per day per property. Fine for one-offs, miserable for bulk work, which is why IndexerNow exists.
Robots meta tag
An HTML tag that tells search engines whether to index a page and follow its links.
The <meta name='robots' content='...'> tag controls per-page indexing behavior. noindex blocks indexing, nofollow blocks link-following. A noindex tag beats any Indexing API push: Google accepts the notification, crawls the URL, then skips indexing because of the tag.
robots.txt
Site-wide file that allows or disallows crawler access to specific paths.
robots.txt lives at /robots.txt and lists rules per user-agent. Disallowing a URL there stops crawling outright, so Google never reads the page's content, or even its robots meta. For 'do not index but do crawl', reach for the noindex meta instead.
Search Console
Google's free tool for monitoring how your site appears in Google Search.
Google Search Console (GSC) is the source of truth for how Google sees your site. It also powers the Indexing API auth flow, which is why IndexerNow can only submit URLs belonging to a property your Google account has verified in GSC.
Sitemap
An XML file listing the URLs you want search engines to know about.
A sitemap.xml exposes your URL inventory in a machine-readable format. Sitemaps are a passive discovery signal: they tell Google what exists, not what changed. Pair sitemap submission with the Indexing API to actively push your high-priority URLs.
Soft 404
A page that returns HTTP 200 but looks like a 'not found' to Google.
When Google fetches a URL that returns 200 OK but whose body says 'not found' or is nearly empty, it calls that a soft 404 and drops it from the index. Return a real 404 or 410 status code for missing pages.
URL Inspection API
Google API that returns the current indexed verdict for a URL.
The URL Inspection API is the programmatic equivalent of Search Console's URL Inspection panel. It returns Google's current coverage state, last-crawl time, robots verdict, indexedUrl, and canonical decision for a URL on a verified property. 2,000 calls per day per property, 600 per minute.
URL_UPDATED
The Indexing API notification type for new or changed URLs.
Push a URL through the Index tool and IndexerNow sends a URL_UPDATED notification to Google's Indexing API. The other type is URL_DELETED, for a URL that's gone for good.
Verified property
A site you've proven ownership of in Search Console.
Verification methods include DNS TXT records, HTML file upload, HTML meta tag, and Google Analytics. Only URLs under a verified property go through the Indexing API.