Google Indexer & Instant SEO Submitter

This Apify Actor allows you to automatically submit URLs to the Google Indexing API to request crawling or removal of pages designated in your sitemap. It helps notify Google about fresh content on your site, leading to faster indexing and better search visibility.

This Actor is designed to work seamlessly with the Sitemap Generator Actor but can also be used independently with any sitemap URL.

Why use this Actor?

Traditional indexing can take days or weeks. This Actor forces Google to notice your content immediately.

Feature	Standard Indexing	Google Indexer Actor
Indexing Speed	3 to 15 Days	Minutes to Hours
Method	Passive (Waiting for bot)	Active (Push Notification)
Bulk Updates	Slow & Manual	Automated via Sitemaps
Content Priority	Low	High (Direct API priority)
Efficiency	Hit or Miss	100% submission success

Features

• Automatic Submission: Parses XML sitemaps and submits all found URLs.
• Dataset Integration: Can read URLs directly from an Apify Dataset (e.g., from Sitemap Generator).
• Google Indexing API: Uses the official googleapis library for secure interaction.
• Pay-Per-Event: You are charged only for successful URL submissions.
• Test Mode: Dry-run capability to verify configuration without making API calls.

Prerequisites

To use this Actor, you must have:

1. Google Cloud Project: A project with the Indexing API enabled.
2. Service Account: A Service Account created in your Google Cloud Project.
3. JSON Key: A JSON key file downloaded for your Service Account.
4. Google Search Console Access: The email address of your Service Account (e.g., my-sa@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com) must be added as an Owner (or Delegate) property in Google Search Console for the website you are indexing.

How to set up Google Service Account

1. Go to the Google Cloud Console.
2. Create a new project or select an existing one.
3. Navigate to APIs & Services > Library and search for "Web Search Indexing API". Enable it.
4. Navigate to IAM & Admin > Service Accounts.
5. Click Create Service Account, give it a name, and complete the steps.
6. Click on the newly created service account email.
7. Go to the Keys tab, click Add Key > Create new key, select JSON, and download the file.
8. Important: Copy the client_email from the JSON file. Go to Google Search Console, select your property, go to Settings > Users and permissions, and add this email as a user with Owner permission.

Input Configuration

The Actor takes the following input:

Field	Type	Description	Required
service_account_json	String (JSON)	Paste the content of your Service Account JSON key file.	Yes
sitemap_urls	Array	List of direct URLs to your XML sitemaps (e.g., https://example.com/sitemap.xml).	No
dataset_id	String	ID of an Apify Dataset containing sitemap URLs (e.g., output from Sitemap Generator).	No
action	String	URL_UPDATED (default) to request indexing, or URL_DELETED to remove from index.	No
test_mode	Boolean	If true, simulates the process without calling Google API. Default false.	No

Example Input

{
  "service_account_json": "{\"type\": \"service_account\", ...}",
  "sitemap_urls": [
    "https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml"
  ],
  "action": "URL_UPDATED"
}

Pricing

This Actor uses a Pay-Per-Event model. You are charged a small fee for each successful URL submission to the Google Indexing API when the URLs are discovered via the dataset_id input (e.g., from the Sitemap Generator integration). Charging is based on unique URLs: if the same URL appears multiple times in the dataset, it is only counted (and charged) once for successful submission. If a URL is present in both dataset_id and sitemap_urls, it is still treated as a single unique URL and is counted under the dataset_id source, not duplicated. URLs discovered from manually provided sitemap_urls alone are currently excluded from the pay-per-event charge.

Output

The Actor pushes a summary of results to the Apify Dataset. Each item in the dataset look like this:

{
  "url": "https://www.example.com/page-1",
  "action": "URL_UPDATED",
  "status": "SUCCESS",
  "error": null
}

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Fast Sitemap Generator

• URL: https://apify.com/eunit/sitemap-generator
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Your feedback

We are always working on improving the performance of our Actors. So if you’ve got any technical feedback or simply found a bug, please create an issue on the Actor’s Issues tab in Apify Console.