Google Confirms Ongoing Issue With Its Search Index

The cause of the issue is unknown at this time. Google will provide an update within the next 12 hours.

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

These are the details we know so far.

How Many Sites Are Impacted & To What Extent?

Today’s ongoing issue with Google’s search index appears to be impacting new content only.

If you publish new content today, it likely won’t get indexed until the problem is fixed.

You can check for yourself by doing a ‘site:’ search and filter results by the past day or hour.

We’ve published multiple articles on Search Engine Journal today, and none of them are indexed so far, as you can see in the screenshot below:

It’s not known when the issue started, though we can narrow it down to a time window of the past 4 hours based on when new content was last indexed. That means it’s likely new content stopped getting indexed around 7 a.m Eastern time.

This is a developing story… 

Featured Image: Sergei Elagin/Shutterstock