How Damaging Was the Bug in Google’s Index?
A drop on Google’s index is always reason to, at the very least, find out what’s going on. When this happens to roughly 4 percent of Google’s index, it’s time to get suspicious. In fact, this is exactly what happened in April of 2019 when a deindexing bug impacted multiple URLs in Google’s index. But how bad was this particular bug? The San Diego SEO specialists at Saba SEO explain its effects.
What Happened?
In the afternoon on Thursday, April 4th, 2019, Google received reports that several sites were dropping out of Google’s index. The search engine giant received more complaints as Search Console reports continued to show indexing issues the next day. By Saturday, Google claimed the issue was resolved. They retracted that statement the next day before once again claiming everything was good to go later that same day.
How Widespread Was the Impact?
Moz looked at more than 22,000 stable URLs when it came up with the 4 percent estimate, which is only a fraction of the trillions of URLs indexed by Google. Other data providers asked to chime in on the impact of the deindexing bug didn’t have the resources required to provide comparison estimates, which means the impact could have been more widespread, but there’s no way to know for sure.
How Are Individual Websites Affected?
Just because roughly 4 percent of Google’s index may have been affected doesn’t mean this same figure applies to your site. Some websites were unaffected. However, others may have seen 50 percent or more of their pages drop from Google’s index.
What Can Be Done About It?
The coverage report in Google Search Console will show you data related to your indexed pages. You can also see if there have been any significant changes since the deindexing bug was unleashed. Google did acknowledge that because of internal efforts on their part to resolve the indexing issue, there might be some additional indexing irregularities.
This incident occurred, for the most part, over a weekend, which is when traffic is generally lower. The issue has since been fixed, but if you’re still experiencing indexing issues, one option is to resubmit the non-indexing URLs to Google again. There’s nothing you can do to prevent issues of this nature, since it’s beyond your control. The only thing you can do on your part is keep an eye on your stats and be vigilant about reporting anything out of the ordinary.
It’s hard for businesses to keep up with everything that goes on with Google’s operations, so it’s best to let the experts at Saba SEO take care of optimizing your online presence. We are one of the premier San Diego marketing companies, and we have almost fifteen years of experience in search engine optimization, website design, content development, and Internet marketing. Our experts stay up to date on last-minute Google changes and issues so we can offer customized solutions to help you increase your search engine ranking. Whether you need a mobile-friendly website or high-quality content, we’re here to help. Call us at 858-277-1717 to schedule an appointment with one of our SEO experts.
