Indexing Tools Are a Scam — Stop Wasting Your Money

A post on r/SEO caught my attention this week. Someone tested a tool called RapidURLIndexer by purchasing credits to index 288 URLs, hoping that Google would index these pages.

The result? Nothing happened, no refunds. The effective indexing success rate was close to zero.

This did not surprise me at all. I have been saying this for a while, and it is time to write it down clearly: the "indexing tools" you see marketed on X, Reddit, and SEO forums are, to put it bluntly, a scam.

What are indexing tools in SEO?

Getting Google to crawl and index your site so you can start ranking for keywords is hard. It is solely in Google's control, and especially for new sites, it can take months. So, not surprisingly, bad actors in the SEO space use this for quick money-grab schemes.

Let's look into the types of indexing tools on the market:

There are two types of these tools, and both are bad.

Type 1: Indexing API wrappers

The first type of tool is essentially a wrapper around Google's Indexing API. These tools take your URLs, submit them via the API, and charge you for the privilege.

Ignore the fact that Claude Code can build this for you in 5 minutes with prompting.

Here is the problem: the Google Indexing API is designed exclusively for job postings and live video content:

The Indexing API allows site owners to directly notify Google when their job posting or livestreaming video pages are added or removed.

I know this because I have spent almost 10 years doing SEO for job boards since Google Jobs went live - this is bread-and-butter optimization in our space.

I have also written about this in detail in this post: "Is it ok to use the Indexing API for non-jobs", where I tested submitting non-job pages through the API and reported negative results, including long-term traffic damage.

The funniest argument I have heard from people selling these tools is that "Google does not know you are not sending job pages." Of course, they know — non-job pages don't have the job posting schema. Google is not stupid.

Now, I have heard of people adding job posting schema to pages so that Google does not flag this is spammy behaviour, but I have a surprise for you too:

...this counts as a manual action candidate. Manual actions will usually wipe your traffic.

But it gets worse. Most of these tool vendors missed a critical change that happened last year. Google introduced an approval process for the Indexing API. I covered this in Major updates to the Indexing API — the API is no longer enabled by default. You can still create a service account and submit requests, but the Google bot will not visit your pages until you get approved.

So what does that mean? It means the majority of these tools are literally selling you nothing. You pay, they submit your URLs to the API, and Google ignores every single request because the service account was never approved. The bot never comes.

In 2024, anyone could create a service account, enable the Indexing API, and start sending requests. Quota approvals were granted quickly and in large numbers – it was not impossible to receive 5-10 million daily quota requests. And to be completely honest, the process for indexing non-job pages worked until it stopped working. Google got fed up with the abuse and introduced the approval process.

Type 2: Tools that do nothing at all

The second type of tool is even simpler - it does nothing. They take your money, maybe ping some random services, and call it a day—pure money grab.

These are the tools that promise "instant indexing" through some proprietary method they can never quite explain. There is no proprietary method for getting Google to index your pages faster. Google crawls and indexes pages based on its own signals — your site's authority, internal linking, sitemaps, and content quality. No third-party tool can override that process.

What about job boards specifically?

If you are starting a new job board and expect to send jobs to the Google Indexing API immediately, as it used to, you are mistaken.

Google has introduced a lengthy application process for the Indexing API. I say lengthy because the application itself takes about 1 minute. The wait time for approval, based on 12 sites I have worked with since the start of the year, is between 3 and 6 weeks.

This matters because new job boards often launch, expecting to get their jobs indexed within hours. That is no longer the reality.

So what do you do while you wait? This is why it is essential to have three things in place when you start a job board:

Proper sitemaps and the supporting structure around them. I covered this extensively in Do job sites still need to submit a sitemap? — The answer is a resounding yes, and many job boards still don't have them.

A well-organized HTML-catalog so that Google can find your search pages. Your category and location pages need clean URL structures and proper internal linking so that Google can efficiently discover and crawl them.

An exceptionally well crawlable site with appropriate internal links so that Google can still find your jobs. If your site architecture is solid, Googlebot will discover your new jobs through regular crawling even without the Indexing API.

And before all of this, you need a proper job taxonomy — a well-thought-out structure of keywords relevant to your niche and market. This is the foundation on which everything else builds. Your taxonomy defines your category pages, your URL structure, your internal linking patterns, and ultimately how Google understands what your site is about. If you get the taxonomy right, Google can follow a logical path from your homepage through your category pages down to individual job listings. If your taxonomy is a mess, no amount of sitemaps or internal links will compensate for the fact that Google cannot make sense of your site's structure.

Using these tactics will get your job board indexed while you wait for the API approval.

Summary - Indexing Tools are Scams

Stop buying indexing tools. If someone is selling you "fast indexing" or "guaranteed indexation," they are either abusing an API that was never meant for your content or they are taking your money and doing nothing. The Reddit post I started with is just one more data point in a pattern I have seen for years.

If you want your pages indexed, do the tedious work: build a crawlable site, submit proper sitemaps, create content worth indexing, and earn backlinks. There are no shortcuts here, and anyone selling you one isn't being honest.