In late August, we reported about a large drop in the Index Status report within the Google Search Console across all accounts. Google at first told us this was not a bug, but the new more accurate estimate, but then I noticed the numbers jumped back up and stayed up.
So I asked John Mueller about this in yesterday's Google+ hangout at the 5:35 minute mark and he answered that both answers are correct.
That (1) this was a reporting glitch and (2) Google did make an adjustment to the index counts of web sites.
John said:
I think that was just a normal data glitch. Something got messed up with the counts and we kind of showed that in Search Console.So I think the difficulty there is the timing, in that we had this weird data glitch that we noticed afterwards and at the same time we also made adjustments with what we would show in general. So it looked like some of these things were based on the adjustments that we did. The answer you got from PR, the thing I said in the German hangout, but at the same time there was this glitch in the report. So it is a bit of a, a lot of coincidence.
I then asked him to clarify, that "both (answers Google has given me) were correct?" John replied, "yes."
Here is the original statement Google sent me:
This change reflects a more accurate estimation of how many pages Google is indexing.
So even with the bug, Google did make an adjustment, that you may or may not notice, with showing the number of indexed pages in Google.
Forum discussion at Google+.
