Google, as of a few hours ago, is having issues again indexing new content. If you want to find the latest news from the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post or your other favorite magazines - you may be out of luck. Google has confirmed the issue and said they are working on resolving it. With that and related to it, the URL inspection tool is not working.
Here is a screen shot from Valentin Pletzer on Twitter from a few hours ago showing the Washington Post not returning articles in Google News for the past hour or so:
Google has confirmed the issue on Twitter saying "We're aware of reports of indexing issues that are impacting some sites beginning earlier today. We'll provide another update when we have more information to share."
We're aware of reports of indexing issues that are impacting some sites beginning earlier today. We'll provide another update when we have more information to share.
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) August 8, 2019
With this, there is also an issue with the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console, it just returns a something went wrong response:
John Mueller and Danny Sullivan from Google are aware of this as well and they said it is related. Google wrote on Twitter "Related to this, we're currently seeing issues in the URL Inspection tool within Search Console. We recommend waiting for this issue to be resolved, and then checking the URLs later on. Thanks for your patience & sorry for the inconvenience!"
Related to this, we're currently seeing issues in the URL Inspection tool within Search Console. We recommend waiting for this issue to be resolved, and then checking the URLs later on. Thanks for your patience & sorry for the inconvenience!
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) August 8, 2019
Here are Danny and John's responses on Twitter:
Thanks - we're aware of this issue and working to resolve it.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) August 8, 2019
Yes, there are issues that are being looked at.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 8, 2019
Here is Valentin, one of the first to spot this issue:
Looks to me like Google has (news)-indexing issues again. (Try searching "News", "sort by date", "past hour") A lot of news don't get indexed. (Very few do but it's a bit random and nowhere near all.) @searchliaison @JohnMu pic.twitter.com/r7r02xshtY
— Valentin Pletzer (@VorticonCmdr) August 8, 2019
It is still an issue now, some content is getting through but clearly it is far from fixed. Google is working on resolving this issue.
This has happened before with something happening in April 2019 but bigger issues back in earlier. Google fixed a much larger Google search indexing bug that was impacting Google Search Console. This also comes several months after another Google News indexing issue.
Forum discussion at Twitter & Google Webmaster Help.
Update: Yep, it is even impacting this site, where this was published about 15+ minutes ago and this story or other stories here are not in Google's index, which is unusual.
Here is a screen shot of filtering any content from this site for the past hour in Google web search (click to enlarge the screen shot):
Here is a screen shot of filtering any content from this site for the past hour in Google News search (click to enlarge the screen shot):
Update 2: People are asking me if their indexing issues from days or weeks or months ago are related to this, it is not. John Mueller of Google confirmed so:
No problem :). It's just that this particular issue would be starting earlier today, so if you're seeing issues since a few days now, that sounds more like something specific to your website (perhaps a technical issue on your end). Those are easier for you to fix :).
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) August 8, 2019
Update 3: At around 10am EDT, it seems like the URL inspection tool is somewhat working now. Still, I do not see new content from this site indexed yet...
Update: 4:At around 11:40am EDT, Google posted this update, but it seems the indexing issues are not fixed, just the URL inspection tool:
A large part of this issue has been resolved - in particular, the URL Inspection tool should be working normally again. We're currently still working on resolving the remaining issues and will update here once we have more to share. Thanks for your patience!
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) August 8, 2019
Update 5: At 4pm EDT the indexing issue is still not resolved, here are some screen shots:
Google’s indexing issue with it not indexing new content is still NOT resolved https://t.co/BwA6Xxr3NA pic.twitter.com/DPCDuHLZiP
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 8, 2019
Update 6: Friday, August 9th, early morning, it seems Google has begun resolving the indexing issues.
