Google Sitemaps Shows Declines In Index Count, It's A Bug

Jul 17, 2015 - 7:52 am 21 by

Google

There are tons and tons of complaints and concerns posted in the Google Webmaster Forums and posted on Twitter and Google+ about the Google Search Console showing huge drops in the index counts in the Sitemaps report.

Here is a sample report I pulled from one of the profiles I have access to:

Google Index Count Sitemap Drop

You can see on July 14th the index count dropped significantly, in this case by almost 3,000 pages.

Here is another screen shot, showing a drop of around 150,000 indexed pages!

click for full size

I asked Google's Gary Illyes about this and he responded on Twitter saying it is a known bug that Google is addressing.

This is not uncommon for the Google Search Console, formerly Google Webmaster Tools, reporting interfaces to have glitches. But this one is one of the more serious ones.

If you see your page count drop like this in Google Sitemaps reporting, you are not alone, Google is working on fixing it.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Forums, Twitter Google+ and Gary on Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Follow

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: November 8, 2024

Nov 8, 2024 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Election Day Volatility, Helpful Content Update Status, Creators vs SEOs, AI, Ads & More

Nov 8, 2024 - 8:01 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google-Selected Canonical Showing Third-Party's Domain Name

Nov 8, 2024 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google Local Service Ads App To Stop Working In Two Months

Nov 8, 2024 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Continuous Conversational Search In Google App

Nov 8, 2024 - 7:31 am
Search Engine Optimization

Google & Bing In Dublin For IETF Event To Improve Crawling & AI Controls

Nov 8, 2024 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Googler's Platforms Team Batting At AT&T Park