Google has posted a short note in the Search Consoles data anomalies that says there was a bug in Google Search that affected some search features, including but not limited to the Top Stories search feature. Google said this started to be noticeable around October 18th and 19th and a fix was pushed out on October 28th that will take a week to fully rollout.
Google posted in the performance reports data anomalies section with the date of October 28th saying "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."
This is not the typical notice that there was a bug only impacting reporting but rather this looks like a bug impacting Google Search specifically and because of the search bug, you may see weirdness in the Google Search Console performance report from October 18th through October 28th.
I do wonder if this has to do with the weirdness with drops in some some search features and rich results we saw earlier?
I did ask for clarification and will add it when I receive a response:
@JohnMu this is super confusing, going to cover it ASAP but do you have any more detail? Seems like a bug in Google Search, not just a reporting bug? pic.twitter.com/pQOsLr8DlE
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) November 3, 2022
Stay tuned...
Forum discussion at Twitter.
