Google has confirmed an indexing issue or bug specifically with the Top Stories section in Google Search. The issue started around 6pm ET on Friday, September 11th and lasted through around 10pm ET on Friday, September 11th.
Google wrote on Twitter "We had an indexing issue with new articles appearing in Top Stories beginning around 3pm PT. We've now fixed this, though full restoration will likely take several hours, maybe less. We'll update when that's reached." Google later added "Update: our indexing issue was fully resolved around 7pm PT this same day."
Here are those tweets:
Update: our indexing issue was fully resolved around 7pm PT this same day.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) September 12, 2020
I was offline for Shabbat, so I was unable to cover when this happened in real time. But I figured to share this news just in case you missed it and just in case you see a weird gap in your analytics from Friday night?
Again, this was a smaller indexing issue according to Google in that it only impacted the Top Stories section and carousel.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
