Big runs without getting throttled: -delay, -q, and -dry-run
Abhay Khant
Jan 1, 1970 • 2 min read
A sitemap can resolve to 100+ URLs. At a polite delay that's a 15–20 minute run. These three flags keep it calm and in-control.
GSC rate limits are real
Google throttles sustained inspect volume. If you blast hundreds of requests with no delay, the run will stall or error partway through. This is Google's limit, not a bug in the tool. slow down and it works.
-delay: space out the requests
Default is 1s. For large batches, raise it:
./gsc-indexer -creds sa.json "https://www.toolsura.com/sitemap.xml" -delay 10s -report ./report
-delay applies between every URL, including ones expanded from a
sitemap. Start at 8s–10s for big sitemaps and adjust if you still see
throttling.
-dry-run: preview before you commit
A dry run expands sitemaps, dedupes, and lists every URL that would be inspected. with no API calls and no credentials required:
./gsc-indexer -creds sa.json "https://www.toolsura.com/sitemap.xml" -dry-run
Use it to confirm the count and contents before a long run. Great for catching a wrong sitemap URL early.
-q: quiet mode for long runs
By default the tool prints a block per URL. For a 100-URL run that's a lot of
noise. -q collapses it into a single live progress line with a remaining-time
estimate, then prints the summary:
./gsc-indexer -creds sa.json "https://www.toolsura.com/sitemap.xml" -delay 10s -q -report ./report
Errors are still shown even in quiet mode, so you won't miss a failure.
⚠️ Flags must come BEFORE the URLs
This is the most common mistake. Go's flag parser stops at the first non-flag argument, so this fails:
./gsc-indexer -creds sa.json "https://www.toolsura.com/x/" -color always
## "-color" gets treated as a URL → 403 from Google
Put all flags first:
./gsc-indexer -creds sa.json -color always "https://www.toolsura.com/x/"
(The tool now catches this and prints a clear error instead of a confusing 403, but it's still best to order flags first.)
Next
- Automating nightly? CI and -json.
- Hit an error anyway? Troubleshooting.
