Google Search Console is affected by an issue that’s causing delays in updating the Index Coverage report.
This was confirmed by Google on Twitter at 5:11 am EST on September 14.
We're currently experiencing longer than usual delays in the Search Console Index Coverage report. This only affects reporting, not crawling, indexing, or ranking of websites. We'll update here once this issue is resolved. Thanks for your patience!
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) September 14, 2020
The Index Coverage report in Search Console shows which pages on a site have been indexed, as well as any problems encountered with indexing.
Note that this issue does not affect Google’s ability to crawl, index, or rank web pages.
This particular issue only impacts reporting.
That means recently published pages may be omitted from the Index Coverage report even though they are, in fact, indexed.
Until the problem is fixed, the best way to check if a page is indexed is to use the “site:” operator in Google Search.
For example, if you recently published a page on video conferencing tips, you would search for it like this:
Video conference tips site:your-domain.com
If Google can find it with the ‘site:’ operator then your content is being indexed just fine.
Still, it would certainly be more convenient if the Index Coverage report was working as designed.
When Will This Be Fixed?
It’s difficult to say when this problem will be resolved. Even Google hasn’t been able to provide an accurate estimation.
If you look at your Index Coverage report right now you’ll see it was last updated on August 31.
Google’s John Mueller acknowledged the issue on September 9, saying the report should be caught up “soon.”
It looks like they're a bit behind, but I heard they should be catching up soon again. Sorry for the delay!
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) September 9, 2020
Here we are 5 days later and still no sign of the issue being fixed.
Unfortunately, a delay like this is not unheard of. Search Console reporting has been delayed several times in the past, with issues lasting from days to weeks.
In all cases, Google tweeted updates as reporting was up to date.
So the only thing site owners can do is remain patient and continue to wait.
This article will be updated when Google confirms a fix has been implemented.
