Google Removes Search Features Bug Confirmation & Replaces It With Google Discover Search Console Reporting Error

Nov 10, 2022 - 7:41 am 3 by

Google Discover

Google has done something unusual, it has removed one of the confirmed data anomalies notes about a search features bug, and added a new note confirming a bug with Google Discover logging resulting in a data drop in the Search Console Discover performance reports on October 23rd.

As a reminder, Google posted on October 28th that there was a bug in Google Search with some search features including but not limited to Top Stories. I captured the message and linked to it above but if you don't believe me, here it is in the Wayback Machine. Here is what Google wrote "Google released a fix to a bug that primarily affected some search features, such as Top Stories, and that became most noticeable around October 18-19. The bug fix will take about a week to fully rollout." So I assume it was fixed but why remove this note? Why not annotate the note?

And then, Google added a new note, dated October 23rd, impacting Google Discover. The issue was with a logging error that caused a drop with the Google Discover performance report on October 23rd. This was not a bug with Google Search results, it was just a reporting glitch and the search results were not impacted.

Here is what the page looked like before:

click for full size

Here is what it looks like now:

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So if you notice a drop in Google Discover on October 23rd in your Search Console reports, that was a bug with the report. Regarding October 18th through 28th, I am really not sure...

As a note, I did ask Google for more details on the October 28th note, which I never got.

Update: John Mueller said on Mastodon it was removed because Google doesn't document search bugs on that page, he said "The complication is basically that we don't have a great place to put things like this, but we'll figure it out. The "text" there is still relevant, we just don't have a good place to put it."

Forum discussion at Mastodon.

Update 2: Later this afternoon, Google added the notice back, with some changes, here is a screenshot:

click for full size

 

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