Google Search team locates bug affecting indexing content from popular publishers

Google Search has been acting weird, negatively impacting publishers posting new content. The search giant has acknowledged it has discovered the bug and has assured a resolution, possibly within the next 12 hours.

The majority of the recently published articles, including new content, may fail to appear in Google Search results. As first observed and reported by CNET, news articles are either not appearing in search results or Google is suggesting articles from seven to eight hours ago or later, instead of the most recently published content.

I think this was either already resolved or it's a bug with the filter. Looking up multiple brand new articles from @Reuters or @business, they ALL show up as indexed 7 hours ago, even though they were published minutes ago. pic.twitter.com/Fygs5TBr5m
— Ziemek Bućko (@ziemek_bucko) July 15, 2022

Web search expert Barry Schwartz claimed massively popular publications, including Reuters and Bloomberg, had their recently published articles show up as published several hours ago. The Google Search Indexing bug seems to be affecting only recently published articles. Older articles can be found easily.

There's an ongoing issue with indexing in Google Search that's affecting a large number of sites. Sites may experience delayed indexing. We're working on identifying the root cause. Next update will be within 12 hours.
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) July 15, 2022

Google has been hunting the bug. The company’s Google Search Central Twitter handle posted a Tweet today indicating the company is working on finding the root cause of the issue and plans to roll out an update within the next 12 hours.

The Twitter handle posted another Tweet confirming the investigation team had identified the issue, and the company is working on a fix. Google may release an update within the next 12 hours fixing the indexing bug.

We've identified the issue with indexing and we're working on a fix. Next update will be within 12 hours.
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) July 15, 2022

It is important to note that not every search query will yield strange results. It is possible that only certain pieces of content may have been improperly indexed in the last few hours. Google’s “crawler” bots are constantly updating information in the search giant’s servers. This ensures search queries are answered in milliseconds.

Via: CNET