SEARCHENGINES
Google Search Is Broken, Outages, Indexing Issues, Pages Missing & More
Last night, Google suffered a pretty big outage with Google Search that is still lingering through this morning. It seemed to be larger than just an outage because there are tons of complaints about indexing issues, pages dropping out of the index, and super poor quality and dated search results being shown in Google this morning.
The first report I saw of the outage was from 9to5Google last night at around 9:30 pm ET, I tweeted about it then:
It’s not just you, Google Search is having issues – 9to5Google https://t.co/lw7XOpqgQn
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 9, 2022
There was a Google data center fire that seemed to have caused these issues. A Google spokesperson said “We are aware of an electrical incident that took place today at Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, injuring three people onsite who are now being treated. The health and safety of all workers is our absolute top priority, and we are working closely with partners and local authorities to thoroughly investigate the situation and provide assistance as needed.”
Those injured should be in our thoughts and prayers and have a speedy recovery.
The outages looked like this to many searchers, although I did not see it myself:
— cuong vt hcm (@thienhung_dlu) August 9, 2022
Google is broken. pic.twitter.com/4p1OIs1bBU
— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) August 9, 2022
But the outage seemed to have impacted more than just accessibility to Google.com and the Google Search results.
There are tons and tons of complaints about indexing issues and old pages that once ranked, not ranking anymore. Here are just some of those complaints:
Many URLs across various sites are deindexed for intended KWs OR the domains are ranking lower for other pages that reference the target query (e.g. category pages). Also, GSC is producing errors when requesting indexation. Seems widespread. cc:@rustybrick @dannysullivan @JohnMu
— Vlad Rappoport 🇺🇦 (@vladrpt) August 9, 2022
Is an indexing issue going on at the moment?
SERPS dramatically changed. I am missing many pages which I saw yesterday.
site: shows ~ -40% pages for my sites.
My US Flag is gone. 😪 @JohnMu @SEO_Suedwest @googlesearchc @searchliaison @rustybrick @dannysullivan #SEO pic.twitter.com/LMxNmTBpN0— Christian Radny (@ChrisRadny) August 9, 2022
@rustybrick Hi Barry,
Seems like the Google search algorithm is going on
Also, We are noticing some keywords are not showing on Google search as per their position and the same keyword data is showing in GSC.— nishant Gupta (@nishant76026848) August 9, 2022
we are also facing this issues
— Money Innovate (@MoneyInnovate) August 9, 2022
@googlesearchc is there an indexing issue today? A lot of people seem to complain that their sites have disappeared from results? @rustybrick maybe you know more?
— Bastiir (@BastiirMatt) August 9, 2022
Google is aware and John Mueller of Google thinks things will soon start to fix itself as Google recovers:
I’d keep an eye on it today, and please let me know if it doesn’t look like the main URLs are settling down again. (We don’t index everything, so I’d focus on the important URLs for things like this.)
— 🥔 johnmu of switzerland (personal) 🥔 (@JohnMu) August 9, 2022
Let me know if it doesn’t settle down over the course of the day, happy to check with some folks here.
— 🥔 johnmu of switzerland (personal) 🥔 (@JohnMu) August 9, 2022
Yeah, Brodie.
— 🥔 johnmu of switzerland (personal) 🥔 (@JohnMu) August 9, 2022
Plus, the tracking tools don’t know what to make of this outage and broken Google. Some charts are literally on fire and breaking through the X axis:
So Google is a bit of a mess right now but I believe it is being worked on.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
Update at 9:20 am ET: I am hearing some reports that some of the issues are returning back to normal. Keep in mind, that this can take a lot of time, even if you see that things are normal again, the next person might still see some pretty bad results. But this will resolve itself and I do hope those injured have a speed recovery.
Update at 2 pm ET: Hearing reports now that things are mostly back to normal.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Google Won’t Change The 301 Signals For Ranking & SEO
Gary Illyes from Google said on stage at the SERP conference last week that there is no way that Google would change how the 301 redirect signal works for SEO or search rankings. Gary added that it’s a very reliable signal.
Nikola Minkov quoted Gary Illyes as saying, “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal,” when asked if a 301 redirect not working is a myth. Honestly, I am not sure the context of this question, as it is not clear from the post on X, but here it is:
More from @methode:
– 301 redirect not working is a myth. “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal”.#SERPConf2024#SERPConf2024International— Nikola Minkov (@n_minkov) April 19, 2024
We’ve covered 301 redirects here countless times – but I never saw a myth that Google does not use 301 redirects as a signal for canonicalization or for passing signals from an old URL to the redirected URL.
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Again Says Ignore Link Spam Especially To 404 Pages
I am not sure how many times Google has said that you do not need to disavow spammy links, that you can ignore link spam attacks and that links pointing to pages that 404/410 are links that do not count – but John Mueller from Google said it again.
In a thread on X, John Mueller from Google wrote, “if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped.” “They do nothing,” he added, “If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link.”
John then added, “I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.”
Asking if it would hurt to disavow, after responding with the messages above, John wrote:
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
Earlier this year we had tons of SEOs notice spammy links to 404 error pages, John said ignore them. In 2021, Google said links to 404 pages do not count, Google also said that in 2012 and many other times.
Plus, outside of links to 404 pages, Google has said to ignore spammy links, time and time again – even the toxic links – ignore them. The messaging around this changed in 2016 when Penguin 4.0 was released and Google began devaluing links over demoting them.
Here are those new posts in context:
I’d say add both. Lol
— Jeremy Rivera (@JeremyRiveraSEO) April 11, 2024
Sure. But also, save yourself the work completely :-).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
Re-reading your initial post – if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped. They do nothing. If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link. I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
… but still… is this a dumb idea?
— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) April 11, 2024
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
And in general, Google says it ignores spammy links, so you should too (not new) but this post from John Mueller is:
I would just ignore them, Google ignores them too. Sometimes they’re just more visible in tools, but that doesn’t mean they’re a problem.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 18, 2024
And then also on Mastodon wrote about a similar situation, “Google has 2 decades of practice of ignoring spammy links. There’s no need to do anything for those links.”
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Needs Very Few Links To Rank Pages; Links Are Less Important
Gary Illyes from Google spoke at the SERP Conf on Friday and he said what he said numerous times before, that Google values links a lot less today than it did in the past. He added that Google Search “needs very few links to rank pages.”
Gary reportedly said, “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.”
I am quoting Patrick Stox who is quoting what he heard Gary say on stage at the event. Here is Patrick’s post where Gary did a rare reply:
I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理/경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
Gary said this a year ago, also in 2022 and other times as well. We previously covered that Google said links would likely become even less important in the future. And even Matt Cutts, the former Googler, said something similar about eight years ago and the truth is, links are weighted a lot less than it was eight years ago and that trend continues. A couple of years ago, Google said links are not the most important Google search ranking factor.
Of course, many SEOs think Google lies about this.
Judith Lewis interviewed Gary Illyes at the SERP Conf this past Friday.
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