Google experienced a major outage this week that affected Search and Maps. Publishers and SEOs have also reported problems with search indexing.
The issue appears to be largely resolved, although some pockets still reported persistent issues earlier today.
Rank break
Many reported a ranking break, and some believed it was due to ranking updates.
a panicked man Posted a discussion about loss of rankings at WebmasterWorld:
“I noticed one thing that worried me a lot. Some of the main keywords dropped from 1-2 to 10.
This happened overnight and everything was fine yesterday. What I see today is keywords from the top position to the bottom of the first page.
The reason, at least in my opinion, is obvious – the displayed URL is irrelevant. For example, many of our top-ranking pages for business keywords (by Google) were changed to pages that were barely relevant.
…another thing I’ve seen is that when using site:sitename.com, the indexed pages dropped again from ~230 to 169 overnight! Homepages in local languages are not displayed anywhere. “
On August 10, 2022, the person who initiated the discussion reported:
“At least for our website, things seem to be back to normal.”
Many others on Twitter and Facebook also said there were no further problems lingering.
index problem
One area that the mainstream media doesn’t cover is indexing issues. Many people in the search community have posted about indexing issues.
SERPs are facing high volatility due to Google indexing issues
Did you encounter any problems? #seo #Google #googledown #Twitter #seonews #Search Engine Optimization #google news #digital marketing #rwnihal pic.twitter.com/foZJ9kEoWk
— Nihal PS (@rwnihal) August 10, 2022
Marie Haynes asked if anyone still sees indexing issues:
How do we feel about the state of indexing today? Is it back to normal?
— Dr. Mary Haynes 🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) August 10, 2022
Some people report that things have returned to normal or are starting to recover:
The index status looks fine, but my store isn’t transitioning like it used to. Ranking status appears to be being re-evaluated. I always see this status within 3-4 days after major changes to the template.
— Christian Radny (@ChrisRadny) August 10, 2022
Started seeing some recovery today
— Stori | Marketing Manager (@storimarketsb2b) August 10, 2022
It appears to be stable and back to normal for at least the past 24 hours.
— Vlad Rapoport 🇺🇦 (@vladrpt) August 10, 2022
Google uses data centers around the world, and changes introduced in search have historically taken time to spread across the globe.
Google apologizes
This The Guardian reports A Google spokesperson apologized for the outage and explained that it was due to a software update (which led to unintended consequences).
“We are aware of a software update issue that occurred late this afternoon Pacific Time and briefly affected the availability of Google Search and Maps,” they said.
“We apologize for the inconvenience. We worked hard to resolve this issue quickly and our service is now back online.”
Google ranking and indexing issues should be resolved by now; if they haven’t, give it a little more time.
If they haven’t changed by the end of the week, then it’s probably not related to the outage, because a coincidence did happen.
Featured image by Shutterstock/Bilanol