Automatically request GSC to index website routes

A cool thing I've done recently was to automatically request Google Search Console to index blog routes when someone edits the content.

Here is the steps

1. Create a service account credential on GCP
2. Download the credential as json and put as a string on GOOGLE_GSC_CREDENTIALS env var
3. In the Google Search Console dashboard, go to the settings of your site and navigate to the Users and Permissions section
4. Click on Add User and add the service account’s email address (this is the client_email field from your service account JSON credentials)
5. Set the permission level to Full
6. Wait few minutes for permissions to propagate

Heads up! you need to verify your domain for this works

Here is the code

import { google } from 'googleapis';

const createAuth = () => {
  const { GOOGLE_GSC_CREDENTIALS } = process.env;
  if (!GOOGLE_GSC_CREDENTIALS) {
    throw new Error('GOOGLE_GSC_CREDENTIALS env var is not set');
  }

  const credentials = JSON.parse(GOOGLE_GSC_CREDENTIALS);

  const auth = new google.auth.GoogleAuth({
    credentials,
    scopes: ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/indexing'],
  });

  return () => auth;
};

const getAuth = createAuth();

const gsc = google.indexing({
  version: 'v3',
  auth: getAuth(),
});

interface PublishOrUpdateUrlToIndex {
  url: string;
}
export const publishOrUpdateUrlToIndex = async ({
  url,
}: PublishOrUpdateUrlToIndex) => {
  try {
    await gsc.urlNotifications.publish({
      requestBody: {
        url,
        type: 'URL_UPDATED',
      },
    });
    return { url };
  } catch (error) {
    return { error: <Error>error };
  }
};

interface DeleteUrlFromIndexedRoutes {
  url: string;
}
export const deleteUrlFromIndexedRoutes = async ({
  url,
}: DeleteUrlFromIndexedRoutes) => {
  try {
    await gsc.urlNotifications.publish({
      requestBody: {
        url,
        type: 'URL_DELETE',
      },
    });
    return { url };
  } catch (error) {
    return { error: <Error>error };
  }
};