Reports of Google Dropping Pages Out of Index... possibly a bug?

"Main search results now fully fixed," per Google, but new problems in GSC Reporting.

[Robert Charlton]

Just a note that Barry, on seroundtable, is citing widespread reports of Google dropping pages out of the search index; and though there's no official word yet from Google, it appears to be a bug....
[webmasterworld.com...]

Google Is Dropping Pages Out Of The Search Index; A Bug?
Apr 5, 2019 • 7:48 am
by Barry Schwartz
[seroundtable.com...]

Something weird is going on with the Google search index. I am seeing wide spread reports of SEOs and webmasters complaining that their URLs and web pages are being removed from the Google Index. Lots of folks are noticing that a nice percentage of their web sites are no longer coming up for a site command or showing in Search Console as being indexed.

Sources include our April Google Updates and SERPs thread [webmasterworld.com...]

[tangor]

Keep a bottle of antacids close at hand! Life in the g lane is a rollercoaster. (sigh)

[Chris_Boggs]

anyone see any coincidental timing of GSC warning for Hacked Content Injection around the same time as this?

[lee_sufc]

Urgh. I get your pain regarding your reliance on Google. I too have tried looking for alternatives, but just keep hitting a brick wall

[tangor]

Don't hit it ... climb over it. There's more to life on the other side of the g wall.Promise! (but you have to work for it)

[Selen]

There's more to life on the other side of the g wall.Promise!

The wall on the other is... the paid wall.

[tangor]

.... As in paid for doing direct sales, service, and product ... but who's taking score? (ME!)

There is something on the other side. Just got go find it!

[JesterMagic]

Notice a spike starting yesterday (and today) in Google bot crawling my site and seeing most of my pages return in the index along with competitors.

[glakes]

I think it is fixed or near fixed. I was getting some solid conversions from Google during a portion of the time it was broken. Now that it is fixed, Google is back to sending crap traffic. I hope Google breaks more often!

[Robert Charlton]

anyone see any coincidental timing of GSC warning for Hacked Content Injection around the same time as this?

Chris_Boggs, no I haven't, but it's an interesting thought. I am seeing reports suggesting coincidental churn in niches that I know are vulnerable to competition from sites with this kind of injected content, and thus may often be targeted.

[Chris_Boggs]

Hi Robert_Charlton thanks for the reply! I was looking specifically at a travel aggregate

[Robert Charlton]

Chris_Boggs... 'travel aggregator' might fit the type of profile I'm thinking could be vulnerable... many non-unique listings that couldn't possibly all have good quality inbound linking, making those sites susceptible to hi-jacking without much in the way of a powerhouse network of external links. Possibly, one of the misuses of the add-URL tool was to supply link juice or inclusion for this type of site.

[tangor]

Aggregaters might have a tough row to hoe in the future, unless there is some serious ORIGINAL content involved. The days of living off of links and back links is reaching sunset.

[phranque]

as of ~4 hours ago, danny sullivan tweeted that the indexing problem has been "fully resolved":

The indexing issue has now been fully resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience. We appreciate your patience as we restored normal operation.

(source: @searchliaison [twitter.com])

[Robert Charlton]

PS to Chris_Boggs... It occurs that the structure I was thinking of when I posted above... "many non-unique listings that couldn't possibly all have good quality inbound linking"... might well not describe the sites of many or most travel aggregators.

It's possible for a travel aggregator to use a booking engine, where the listings would be accessed via a drop-down interface, so there wouldn't necessarily be multiple pages for multiple listings or multiple destinations at all.

[Chris_Boggs]

Robert_Charlton how do you quote parts of a previous comment in this forum interface? will try with copy/paste below

<quote> It's possible for a travel aggregator to use a booking engine, where the listings would be accessed via a drop-down interface, so there wouldn't necessarily be multiple pages for multiple listings or multiple destinations at all. </quote>

In this case the listings that are being called out as "Content Injected" are actually individual hotel unit pages fed by such a database as well as various other drop-downs of content being pulled-in that are unique to the location but served in a sub-scroll. Hey we can move this somewhere else if you want thanks again!

[not2easy]

@ Chris:

how do you quote parts of a previous comment in this forum interface?

Just the way you guessed, except with "[" "]" rather than "<" ">"

It's been years since you might have seen it, but the Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com] page has a lot of these 'secret' tips. ;)

[Chris_Boggs]

Thank you @not2easy!

[doodoofan]

Google claims that this issue has been fully resolved, but I'm not seeing that yet. My site's traffic is still down by around 30%. Many people posted on twitter that some of their pages are still deindexed. Could it be possible that Google released a statement claiming the issue is solved while in fact it has not?

[Zalman]

Google claims that this issue has been fully resolved, but I'm not seeing that yet. My site's traffic is still down by around 30%. Many people posted on twitter that some of their pages are still deindexed. Could it be possible that Google released a statement claiming the issue is solved while in fact it has not?

Well I am seeing the same issues as you. So I would say, yes it's very possible.

[ichthyous]

@doodoofan My pages reappeared after about two days, but my traffic dropped off considerably on the 12th and never returned. Placement for numerous top 3 ranking terms dropped to fourth place...top three spots are now occupied by sites that were perhaps top ten before...Etsy, Pinterest, Getty, etc. Google seems to be favoring huge companies in my field.

[doodoofan]

Thanks for your replies, guys. I don't know what's going on with Google, I can only hope this drop in traffic is not permanent. I'll see how things turn out in the next few weeks.

[BangkokBaby]

I looked at my GSC today and the latest data from the Tuesday and Wednesday (9/10th) shows that half my site is de-indexed. Site traffic gone down and is still down quite a bit the last two days. Anyone else notice this?

[imgur.com...]

[doodoofan]

I looked at my GSC today and the latest data from the Tuesday and Wednesday (9/10th) shows that half my site is de-indexed. Site traffic gone down and is still down quite a bit the last two days. Anyone else notice this?

Same here. I just checked my GSC and one third of my site is de-indexed. Many URLs appeared as "Crawled - currently not indexed". This gave me a panic attack, since most of these pages are very important. But when I inspected some URLs, GSC said they are submitted and indexed. I tried to search for them, and found that these pages are indeed online and on top position as usual. Could this be another bug? As for traffic, it has been down since the deindexing bug began, but I don't see any significant loss these past two days in particular.

[BangkokBaby]

I log into my GSC today and it seems Tuesday and Wednesday have been removed (where two post above you can see it's visible and pages have dropped)

This was taken today, both tues/weds are not showing:

[imgur.com...]

Anyone else seeing that in their GSC?

[prica]

Anyone else seeing that in their GSC?

Same here! :-/

[rustybrick]

[twitter.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

Thanks, Barry. At the risk of showing only a partial status, here's the beginning of the latest from Google Webmasters on Twitter, which you'd linked to....

Google Webmasters
Verified account @googlewmc
[twitter.com...]
3:39 AM - 15 Apr 2019

Search Console is still recovering from
the indexing issue we reported on last
week. As a result, index coverage and
enhancement reports were not updated
recently & URL Inspector might not
reflect live status, at the moment.

We will update when issues with reports & URL inspector are resolved. For
now, to best determine if a URL is indexed, use a site: search. If you discover a
URL is not included, this is likely a site-specific issue as the broad indexing
issue has been resolved....

[Robert Charlton]

PS: Update in SER is a bit more complete, and complex....

Google's Indexing Bug Spreads Like A Virus To Coverage Report, URL Inspection Tool & More
Apr 15, 2019 • 7:40 am - by Barry Schwartz
[seroundtable.com...]

The Google de-indexing bug, which took about 6 days to resolve and is supposedly resolved as of last Thursday is now causing issues within Google Search Console. The coverage and enhancement reports, as well as the URL Inspection tool are all impacted according to Google....

Since the resolution of the indexing bug, Barry reports new bugs in the GSC coverage reports....

...Google Search Console coverage reports showing huge dips in indexing after the bug was resolved (yes, showing drops after the issue was resolved, not during).

And Barry's summation is helpful....

Again, Google said it is resolved in the main search results, but now the Search Console reports and tools are having issues.

It's worth mentioning that the dips noted after the main search bug was resolved may be showing in screen captures some users here are posting.

I've also noticed several posts here which suggest that there was some fall-off in organic results several days before this indexing bug was identified, and I'm wondering whether that's been identified now by Google internally.

For an example of that early fall-off, see the first screen capture with this post here...

I don't understand Google anymore.
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4942301.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Thanks, Barry, for staying with this story...

[ichthyous]

Many URLs appeared as "Crawled - currently not indexed"

I'm seeing the same thing...almost 1,000 pages suddenly moved to that status on the 8th of April and it started showing up last night in GSC. They all appear as being in the index when the url inspection tool is used. But my traffic has been a disaster since March 12th...perhaps this gives us a clue why?

[Zalman]

Here's a strange one...

When performing a site: operator search. I get 5 pages full of results. I can manually go through these pages and see which URLs are currently indexed. I've wrote them all down on a spreadsheet.

Oddly, when I click "repeat the search with the omitted results included. " My results go down to 2 pages?

I understand the initial search is just an estimate and that the numbers are never right. But I am manually viewing these URLs and they are definitely showing indexed.

So are these other URL's indexed or not?