Google Indexing Bug: What was It And How The Issue Was Resolved

Google is known for its mellow search engine services that usually run clear from any disturbance,
however, in the last few months, SEO experts at Google realized that Google’s indexing process was
facing a grave anomaly which made the search engine lose control of its indexing process. The result
was that the SERPs were filled with historic results, or simply put, unfresh content in the news and
web feed section. A similar Google indexing bug occurred during May as well as April.

What Really Happened?

Vincent Courson, Google Search Outreach, confirmed that on April 5th, the deployment system broke in parts as they were updating the index due to some data-centric reasons. The procedure went awry as a small number of documents ended up being removed from the index accidentally. They lost a part of the index, the aftermath of which was still visible in Google’s indexing issues on the morning of August 9. However, Google announced that the lost chunk was replaced with the backed up data. And on April 11 they were completely confident that all data centers were fully back to a complete version of the index.

Google Search Console also reportedly developed inconsistencies due to this incidence with Google’s
indexing issue. Since the basic purpose of search console’s existence is to present itself as a
webmaster tool to depict a website’s performance, its database froze for a short period of time when
Google’s search engine was facing the aberration. This too has been reported to be fixed by Google.

What Happened On August 8th?

According to Search Engine Land, Google stopped displaying fresh content on the morning of the 8th

of August. The feeds, after being filtered were unable to show fresh content related to sites who post
content regularly. However, this was resolved hours after the indexing bug was recognized. Now, you
can even test the search engine as it will only show recently published or relevant content.

Conclusion

Google observed a decline in its traffic due to this persistent bug in its indexing process. The Google’s team has announced its resolvement on Twitter but there are chances that the bug might still
reappear as it had done so twice in the past couple of months.