How To Set Up An Indexer

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Introduction

Indexers make your content appear in search results quickly by pinging Google and forcing them ingest your URLs.

Without Indexers, it may take months for your content to appear. With indexers it can start showing up in as little as a day.

How to set up an Indexer

Setting up an Indexer requires access to the Starter or Business plans. If you haven't upgraded, please do so.

To create an indexer, navigate into a collection, then click on the "Indexing" tab.

Click on the "Create Indexer" button and fill in the form.

Note that we support two types of Indexers, Sitemap-based and URL-based.

Sitemap-based

A Sitemap-based Indexer will automatically scan your sitemap and submit every URL it find for indexing. It will also check for updates to your sitemap every day and update its list of URLs if you sitemap changes.

This is best for a completely hands-off experience.

URL-based

A URL-based Indexer will take in a list of URLs you wish to index and submit them for indexing in order.

This is best if you don't currently have a sitemap for your site.

Google Search Console Credentials

Indexers work by submitting your URLs to Google Search Console (GSC). GSC limits the number of URLs submitted per account per day to 200. Because of that we require you to enter your own GSC Credentials.

How to create Google Search Console Credentials

For this you'll need a a Google Cloud account.

  1. Go to your Google Cloud Console Dashboard
  2. Create a new project
  3. Enable the Google Search Console and Indexing API
    1. Go to the API Library
    2. Search for "Google Search Console API" and enable
    3. Search for "Web Search Indexing API" and enable
  4. Create a Service Account
    1. Search for "Service Accounts" and select the item under "IAM & Admin"
    2. Click "Create Service Account"
    3. Title it "endless-indexing" and click "Done"
    4. Open the Service Account you just created and select the "Keys" tab
    5. Click "Add Key" then "Create new key"
    6. Select "JSON" for the Key type then click "Create"
    7. This will download your GSC Credentials, which you'll need later
    8. Go back and copy the email for your Service Account (it will end in iam.gserviceaccount.com)
  5. Add your Service Account to GSC
    1. Go to GSC Dashboard
    2. If you haven't added your site to GSC do so now
    3. Select "Settings" from the navigation menu
    4. Select "Users and permissions", then "Add User"
    5. Enter the email from your Service Account and set "Permission" to "Owner"
    6. Click "Add"

Note that you'll only be able to index URLs for sites that you add this Service Account to in GSC. It's also worth noting that each Google Cloud project get its own quota of 200 indexing request per day, so if you want to index several sites quickly you may want to repeat this process multiple times.

Finishing Up

Now that you have the APIs enabled and your Service Account added to your GSC site, finish filling out the form. The final field will be the JSON Key you download previously.

Once you submit your site will begin indexing!

Conclusion

Setting up an Indexer is the fastest way to make sure you content is appearing in Google results and driving traffic to your site. If you have any questions, please contact support