Backlink indexer APIs

What an indexing API is for

Dashboards suit occasional batches. Once URLs come from somewhere else (a link-building tracker, a CMS, a client spreadsheet, a SaaS product that resells indexing) a person copying lists between tabs becomes the bottleneck. A backlink indexer API exposes the same jobs over HTTP so that other systems can start them and collect the results.

This page covers what such APIs commonly look like and then documents the public IndexChex API at the level of its published API reference. For the category as a whole, see what backlink indexer software is.

Common endpoints

Across vendors, four resources recur:

Options on job creation usually include a name or title, the submission mode (standard or a faster premium mode), and sometimes a drip period or an automatic follow-up check. Many APIs also offer a list endpoint for paging through past jobs and a single-URL shortcut for one-off submissions.

Authentication patterns

Nearly all indexer APIs use a static key issued per account. The differences are in how it is sent:

• Bare key in the Authorization header. The header value is the key itself, with no scheme prefix.
• Bearer token. Authorization: Bearer <key>, the common OAuth-style form.
• Custom header or query parameter. Some older APIs read the key from a named header or the URL. Keys in URLs end up in access logs along the way, so a header is preferable.

Whatever the format, the key carries the account's purchasing power: anyone holding it can spend credits. API key hygiene covers storage and rotation.

Synchronous versus asynchronous

A synchronous API would hold the connection open until every URL is processed. That does not work for indexing, where crawls and index lookups take minutes to days. Indexer APIs are therefore asynchronous: the create call validates the input, reserves credits and returns a job ID. The client then either polls the status endpoint or receives a webhook when the job changes state. Polling is simpler to run behind a firewall; webhooks need a public endpoint and signature checks. The polling guide covers intervals and backoff.

The IndexChex API

The IndexChex API exposes the same index checks and submissions as the IndexChex web app. All endpoints sit under https://indexchex.com/api. Requests send the API key as the full value of the Authorization header, with no prefix:

Authorization: YOUR_API_KEY
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: application/json

Keys are created in the account's API settings, and each key belongs to one user, so a job is visible only to the account that created it. Both versions allow 120 requests per minute per user and draw on the same credit balance as the app. There are no webhooks; clients poll.

Version 1

Setting instantIndex to true selects instant mode, which accepts up to 1,000 URLs per job at 60 credits per URL. Otherwise standard mode applies: up to 10,000 URLs at 1 credit per URL. A checker value from 1 to 5 schedules an automatic index check that many days after submission, at 1 credit per URL. A URL listed under failed_links in a check report could not be looked up, and should not be read as unindexed. The submission walkthrough and index-check walkthrough show full request flows.

Version 2 (SpeedyIndex-compatible)

Version 2 mirrors SpeedyIndex's API schema so that an existing SpeedyIndex integration can switch by changing its base URL and key.

Google is the only engine. Because IndexChex has one credit balance, the account endpoint reports the same number for indexer and checker. Responses carry a numeric code: 0 for success, 1 for insufficient credits (HTTP 402), 2 for a rate limit or a request that could not be completed, and 3 for an invalid payload or a report that is not ready yet. An indexer report needs a scheduled re-check, since it lists which submitted URLs were found in Google. The migration guide lists the differences that matter in practice.

Choosing an API

When comparing vendors, the questions that matter for automation are whether the API covers checking as well as submission, whether failed lookups are reported separately from negative results, what the rate limit and job size are, and whether pricing over the API matches the dashboard. The IndexChex software page summarises its limits and costs in one place.