An earlier Google Search glitch that was preventing new website content from filtering into Google has seemingly been resolved on Friday afternoon.
Earlier in the day, Google said that it was experiencing ongoing indexing issues preventing new content and articles from appearing in Search. Indexing is when Google takes new content published from websites and feeds it into search results. This meant that when entering queries in Google, any articles recently published wouldn’t appear in Search. Google said an update would come within 12 hours, but some kind of fix has already taken place. Google has yet to update its Search Central Twitter feed with new information.
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
Before, searching for CNET or CNN articles published within the last hour produced zero results. We couldn’t find results when searching for a handful of other sites, such as Bloomberg, The New York Times and Yahoo. The same goes for other search terms, apart from ads.
Google Search not indexing new content — in this example, related to the Pixel 6A.
Screenshot by Imad Khan/CNETOlder content was still searchable.
Google Search results for Pixel 6A.
Screenshot by Imad Khan/CNETThe glitch was causing search to work in odd ways. For some sites, new articles were appearing as published hours ago when they were published much more recently. We tried replicating the below experiment for CNET articles and it didn’t yield any results.
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
Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Update, 3:25 pm PT: Reflects the fact that the search issue has been resolved.
