The Indexing API isn't a faster sitemap, and using it as one does nothing

The Indexing API isn't a faster sitemap, and using it as one does nothing

Myth: the Google Indexing API is the modern way to get any page crawled fast.

No. Officially it supports exactly two schema types: JobPosting and BroadcastEvent. For everything else Google says outright it won't help, and tests confirm it mostly no-ops or briefly crawls then reverts.

Here's the thing. People wire up the Indexing API for blog posts and product pages, see a coincidental crawl, and credit the API. Correlation, not cause. The sitemap with honest lastmod plus solid internal links was always going to get there.

The tradeoff: for real job and livestream content, the API genuinely accelerates crawl and is the right tool. For anything else it's theater that risks looking like manipulation.

It's a specialist instrument. You keep using it as a megaphone.