Over the past 24 hours or so, Google has sent me dozens of notices from sites I have verified Google Search Console properties with. The notices say "New Coverage issue detected" and the specific error is a "redirect error." Google said it is looking into why all these notices went out.
UPDATE: This was a bug, Google confirmed it a day or so later with this tweet:
An internal issue is causing an increase of redirect errors during indexing, and associated email notifications. This is not due to any website issues, but is due to an internal Google issue. We hope to fix this problem quickly.
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 13, 2021
Here is one I received for my corporate site, but I received tons, it reads:
Coverage issues detected on rustybrick.comTo the owner of rustybrick.com:
Search Console has identified that your site is affected by 1 Coverage issues:
Top Errors
Errors can prevent your page or feature from appearing in Search results. The following errors were found on your site:
Redirect error
We recommend that you fix these issues when possible to enable the best experience and coverage in Google Search.
Here is a screenshot (click to enlarge):
When you click on the fix it link, you are taken to the Coverage report drilled down into the Redirect error statuses. Here is a screenshot of that:
Google is looking into the issue but Daniel Waisberg and John Mueller of Google said "We're looking into this..."
Here are some folks tweeting about this with more:
Heads-up, I'm seeing a big spike in redirect errors across sites in the Coverage reporting. Those redirects looks fine when analyzing them... Also, that coincides w/a crawl stats error for "Server Connectivity" across those sites impacted. I think Googlebot had too much eggnog :) pic.twitter.com/PGY0EkLAcv
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 12, 2021
Same over here: https://t.co/bMcxV3fKOX
— Alexander Außermayr (@aussermayr) December 12, 2021
There are tons of SEOs concerned about this but the good news, it is super wide spread so it is likely an issue on Google's end.
Here is how Daniel and John replied:
We're looking into this...
— Daniel Waisberg (@danielwaisberg) December 12, 2021
We're looking into it. pic.twitter.com/F8gGKktRzc
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 12, 2021
More responses from Google on this:
We're looking into it - seems a bit weird given the many people suddenly posting about it. pic.twitter.com/OsIjYCTJQX
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 12, 2021
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 12, 2021
We're currently looking into these reports - I'll post more when we know more.
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 12, 2021
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 12, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
UPDATE: This was a bug, Google confirmed it a day or so later with this tweet:
An internal issue is causing an increase of redirect errors during indexing, and associated email notifications. This is not due to any website issues, but is due to an internal Google issue. We hope to fix this problem quickly.
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 13, 2021
UPDATE 2: Google also posted a message in the data anomalies in Search Console document that on December 9th and ongoing both in the index coverage and crawl stats reports "An internal issue is causing an increase of redirect errors during indexing, and associated email notifications. This is not due to any website issues, but is due to an internal Google issue. We hope to fix this problem quickly."
Google also posted notices in the data anomalies document about the redirect errors issue both in the coverage report and crawl stats report https://t.co/oua7jEFC4w pic.twitter.com/wAKdsx0q5l
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) December 14, 2021
Update 3: Google updated the notice in the data anomalies document saying this runs from December 6th to December 14th, so it was resolved after that.
Google’s redirect issue is resolved as of December 14th according to this document, so it was an issue from December 6th through the 14th - more details at https://t.co/oua7jEFC4w pic.twitter.com/YD2kmnBUiK
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) December 16, 2021
