Google said yesterday on Twitter they are aware of an indexing bug impacting a limited number of publishers and they are working to fix it. It seems like the fix has been rolling out, although Google has yet to confirm this issue has been resolved yet.
Here is Google's tweet about the issue:
We're aware of some indexing issues with Google News content. It appears to involve a limited number of publishers. We're actively diagnosing the news issue now. This is not related to last week's indexing issue, which was resolved.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 16, 2019
Ben Kendrick who has been following this closely and who has a site that was impacted by this said he believes the fix is out:
FYI: This appears to be resolving for us. New articles are appearing at the normal rate in News now.
— Ben Kendrick (@benkendrick) April 17, 2019
I received some screen shots of the impact of this bug on one publisher. Here is how it looked like in the Google News search results:
Here is how the traffic was impacted by this bug:
Yes, this comes shortly after Google fixed a much larger Google search indexing bug that is still impacting Google Search Console. This also comes several months after another Google News indexing issue.
Here is Gary Illyes from Google throwing up his hands:
Let's just put some Monday in our Tuesday, shall we? https://t.co/8IUuZ44uDy
— Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) April 16, 2019
Google seems to be full of bugs over the past month or so?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Yep, Google posted an update this morning:
Indexing of news content has now been resolved. New content should be indexed as normal. Much of the content missed during the issue has been reindexed and the remaining will be reindexed in the next day or so. Our apologies for inconvenience, and we appreciate your patience.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 17, 2019
