Google removes Web Search Service API documentation

Google has pulled the documentation for its Web Search Service API. The overview page at developers.google.com/web-search-service/overview now returns a 404, and a request to it shows no redirect. Search Engine Roundtable reported the removal on 28 September 2026.

What did the documentation say?#

The Internet Archive captured the overview page on 20 September 2026, and its footer reads “Last updated 2026-09-19 UTC”. It describes a service that lets programmatic partners build websites and applications that retrieve and display Google Search results. Partners send REST or gRPC requests and get results back as JSON, with search result items, timing and metadata.

Before querying, the page says partners need an active Google Cloud project, an API key, and a client ID tied to the partner agreement. Monitoring runs through the API Dashboard in the Google Cloud Console.

Search Engine Journal covered the pages on 11 September, when it counted the overview and four related pages updated on 9 September. It reported one main method, Search, returning up to 20 results per request, 10 by default. It also reported that the pages did not say how a company becomes a partner, what the service costs or what query limits apply.

When was it removed?#

The timeline is loose. Search Engine Roundtable says Google pulled the pages “last week”, meaning the week before 28 September. Manas Panda, quoted in that report from LinkedIn, says a developer page for a paid tier appeared around 22 August and was a hard 404 by 20 September. Our check found a 404 on 1 October, but the 20 September archive still holds the page, so we cannot confirm his date from the sources we could read.

Google has made no statement in either report. Search Engine Roundtable suggests the pages were published by accident, but gives no evidence for it, so treat that as a guess.

Why does it matter for SEO?#

For most sites, little changes. This is a partner product, not a feature you can switch on. It matters to anyone who built on the Custom Search JSON API, which Search Engine Journal reports closes to new customers and is discontinued on 1 January 2027. The Web Search Service pages were the clearest public detail yet of Google’s full-web alternative, and they are gone again.

Rank-tracking and data vendors already face a tighter Google, as our report on scraper blocking and rank trackers shows. A documented partner route would have mattered to them, and there is none to cite now.