Have you searched Google today and felt like you weren’t seeing the newest information? You’re not alone. At some point yesterday, Google’s search indexing seems to have stopped processing new pages from many of the internet’s largest websites.
Sometime yesterday afternoon, Google’s search indexing servers seem to have begun having issues, with many sites finding their newer content not being included in results. The issue also appears to be impacting sites that use Google Custom Search, with new pages not appearing in those results either.
Among the sites affected, we find major outlets like CNN, The Verge, and the entire 9to5 network showing stale results in Google searches. Search indexing hasn’t stopped entirely, however, as certain websites seem to be unaffected by the issue.
This isn’t the only time Google’s indexing has had a major issue in recent memory. In May, Google Search indexing came to a complete stop, with no websites appearing in “past hour” searches for sites or news. At that time, Google had the issue resolved within a few hours. By comparison, today’s search indexing issue has been going on for a minimum of 12 hours, as a post from 9to5Mac from precisely 12 a.m. PT does not appear in search results.
Google acknowledged today’s search indexing issue this morning on Twitter, also noting that their URL Inspection tool was briefly affected. Unfortunately, Google had no information to share on why certain sites are unaffected, or a timeline for search indexing to resume. We’ll be keeping an eye out for further updates as they happen.
We're aware of reports of indexing issues that are impacting some sites beginning earlier today. We'll provide another update when we have more information to share.
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 8, 2019
A large part of this issue has been resolved – in particular, the URL Inspection tool should be working normally again. We're currently still working on resolving the remaining issues and will update here once we have more to share. Thanks for your patience!
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 8, 2019
Update 8/8 10:45pm: After an extended outage with no communication being offered by Google, search indexing has resumed as inexplicably as it stopped. All pages created during the outage are now appearing in Google searches and Google News as normal.
Update 8/9 8:00am: Over nine hours after the fix rolled out and indexing behavior returned to normal, Google has now publicly acknowledged that everything is back to normal. Still no explanation has been given for what happened or why.
This issue is now resolved. Thanks for all your feedback along the way. Wishing you all a calm weekend!
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 9, 2019
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