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The number of complaints I am seeing from SEOs over the past couple of weeks around indexing is large. Basically I am seeing Google have to respond about there being no issues with how fast or deep Google is indexing sites. Googlers are saying, it might not be worth Google's time to index those pages.
Recently, Google's John Mueller said many indexing issues are related to quality issues. Where Google does not want to use its resources to index your site or parts of your site.
This spiked around the May 2020 core update, here are some tweets:
Hit me with a URL. I don't see general freshness issues on our end, the graphs look stable
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (@methode) May 25, 2020
I'm not aware of any bugs there -- though there can be small glitches from time to time. Sometimes I find people have high expectations of indexation for things we organically wouldn't completely index.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) May 25, 2020
But there are many many more.
So Marie Haynes points out the tweet from Gary Illyes of Google after the January 2020 core update where he said Everyone's reaction when low quality and spammy content is not indexed anymore:
I also have a theory
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (@methode) May 25, 2020
Well, with the May 2020 core update we got the same thing. Google is going to index sites that it finds to be of lesser quality, sites that feel like they got a hit from the core update, less...
Want proof? This site was hit by the May Core update and check out my coverage report. My indexed pages dropped by about 35%, similar to my Google traffic drop.
Clearly, in these cases and based on the past communication from Google, if your site is having quality issues that are consistent with core updates, you probably will see a drop in indexed pages from Google.
I have to say, it is super interesting to watch this site be a direct hit with the Google May 2020 core update. And it is super fun to be able to share it with you all.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
