Several individuals have inquired whether Google has been indexing fewer pages on websites since late May. I've seen a number of complaints, and while nothing is verified on Google's end, I wanted to share these reports with you.
The question is, how widespread is this issue, is it an issue, is it a reporting change, it is a change to Google's indexing algorithms or is it nothing?
John Mueller from Google replied to these concerns on Bluesky asking for specific examples, he wrote, "Which millions of pages? Happy to hear specifics." He later added "Based on these, I don't see a technical issue on our (or on any of the sites) side. Our systems make adjustments in what's crawled & indexed regularly. That's normal and expected."
Update: John Mueller added on Bluesky, "But from looking at other examples, I don't see an issue. We don't index all content, and what we index can change over time."
Jason Kilgore first pinged me about this and then posted on LinkedIn saying, "I'm seeing confirmation of this with TaxServiceNearYou.com; it has 0 backlinks, and is experiencing an outsized level of removal from the index which began on May 26th." For him, the "Crawled - currently not indexed" error saw a spike.
He shared this screenshot with me of that indexing report:
Adam Gent also posted on LinkedIn and wrote, "At Indexing Insight we're tracking millions of pages and over the last few weeks our 'Crawled -previously indexed' report has been blowing up."
Here is his screenshot:
Gagan Ghorta posted on X:
24Cryptoverse also posted on X:
Here are more examples:
We have seen this on more than 10+ search consoles. Pages deindexed on 27th, 28th, and 29th May for all - these are active business websites with good content.
— Consainsights (@consainsights) June 5, 2025
John repied to that one but on Bluesky:
Which millions of pages? Happy to hear specifics.
— John Mueller (@johnmu.com) June 5, 2025 at 4:50 AM
I've noticed a big traffic drop from around the same time though indexed pages are the same for me.
— PAPPACLARTUS (@_GTArena_) June 5, 2025
Plus, there are a number of complaints about this in the comments area on this site:
It's the same for me. Half of my site has been deindexed since May 27, 2025! We work like crazy to provide a reliable site with verified data, and we're being penalized while misleading sites promoting scams remain at the top of the results. It's just disgusting!
I went through some random sites I have access to in Google Search Console and I am seeing a bit of a pattern here - maybe:
I am not sure if something is going on or note - as Glenn Gabe noted on X it might not be something to worry about if it falls under 'indexed, though blocked by robots.txt.
For those seeing a big drop in indexing recently, make sure it's not "indexed, though blocked by robots.txt" dropping (which can look scary, but it's not anything to worry about). I wrote a post about that situation last June. :) https://t.co/TNmdP9fVxe pic.twitter.com/VY30b4P4y8
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 4, 2025
This can be that or it can be a change to how Google processes this report or it can be one of the recent Google unconfirmed updates that ran that now resulted in Google not valuing the pages as much and thus indexing less. For more on that, see this article and this one - although, I've written about that a ton.
Are you noticing the same pattern? Check your page indexing report and dig in and let us know.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
Update: John Mueller added on Bluesky, "But from looking at other examples, I don't see an issue. We don't index all content, and what we index can change over time."
He later added "Based on these, I don't see a technical issue on our (or on any of the sites) side. Our systems make adjustments in what's crawled & indexed regularly. That's normal and expected."
"This is visible in any mid-sized+ website - you will see the graphs for indexing fluctuate over time. Sometimes the changes are smaller, bigger, up, or down. Our crawl budget docs talk about crawl capacity & crawl demand, they also play a role in indexing," he also wrote.
It is not related to a core update, he later said; "But, no, this is not related to a core update."
