Google is working on fixing a widespread technical issue that has led to web pages getting removed from Google’s index.
Webmasters and SEOs have been affected by this issue since this past Thursday. Google didn’t officially acknowledge there was an issue until Saturday.
On Saturday, Google’s John Mueller incorrectly reported that the problem was fixed:
Sorry — We had a technical issue on our side for a while there — this should be resolved in the meantime, and the affected URLs reprocessed. It's good to see that the Inspect URL tool is also useful for these kinds of cases though!
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 6, 2019
A day later, on Sunday, Danny Sullivan published a follow-up tweet via the Search Liaison account.
It turns out that the indexing issues are mostly fixed, and are on the way to becoming fully resolved.
We're aware of indexing issues that impacted some sites beginning on Friday. We believe the issues are mostly resolved and don't require any special efforts on the part of site owners. We'll provide another update when the issues are considered fully resolved.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 7, 2019
Also, as stated in the tweet, there’s nothing site owners need to do to get the issue resolved. The problem is all on Google’s end.
With that said, however, if there are a few high-value pages that you absolutely need indexed again ASAP you can always use the Inspect URL tool.
Using the Inspect URL tool, site owners can call on Google to recrawl and reprocess specific pages. The caveat is it can only process one URL at a time.
So the Inspect URL tool is not an ideal solution for getting a large number of pages back in Google’s search index, but it’s a decent option for a handful of pages.
Mueller adds that even when the issue is fully resolved, not every URL on every site will be reindexed.
One thing to add here – we don't index all URLs on the web, so even once it's reprocessed here, it would be normal that not every URL on every site is indexed. Awesome sites with minimal duplication help us recognize the value of indexing more of your pages.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 7, 2019
Lastly, Mueller says things will eventually “settle back like before,” which is certainly good news for those who are worried about rankings being affected by this issue.
One thing to add here – we don't index all URLs on the web, so even once it's reprocessed here, it would be normal that not every URL on every site is indexed. Awesome sites with minimal duplication help us recognize the value of indexing more of your pages.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 7, 2019
Google has thus far not provided any specific details regarding what caused the error in the first place.
