Google News Indexing Disruption Causes Decrease In Traffic For Content Publishers

Google is investigating a service disruption affecting Google News indexing, according to the Google Search Status Dashboard.

There’s an ongoing issue with indexing in Google News that’s affecting all sites. Sites may be experiencing a decrease in traffic from Google News. We’re working on identifying the root cause. Next update will be within 24 hours.

Screenshot from Google, July 2023

The Google Search Status Dashboard is a tool that provides status updates for Google Search systems and indicates any issues affecting multiple sites or users that might explain changes in site performance.

When Google News Indexing Issues Began

Trouble with Google News traffic was reported on Twitter several hours ago.

is Google News platform (https://t.co/ILD5MsHxuu) broken broken since june 20th ? Le https://t.co/Te9GswWSKA = 0% visibility (source : @NewsDashboard) Thanks for feedback ! Poke @JohnMu pic.twitter.com/7aGU56IGQJ

— Virginie Clève – largow Stratégie digitale ☕️ (@largow) July 10, 2023

John Mueller, Google Search Advocate, responded:

Hi folks, we have this listed as an incident that the team is investigating now: https://t.co/NlsLfymPx4

— John Mueller (official) · Not #30D (@JohnMu) July 10, 2023

What’s Next

When an issue is detected, the Search Relations and Search Engineering teams at Google collaborate to resolve it.

Detection is often based on various signals, such as internal monitoring and community feedback.

Now, the Search Engineering team is tasked with investigating the root cause of the issues with Google News indexing.

While the issue is in progress, mitigation measures may be employed to reduce the problem’s scope or impact.

Continued Updates About Google News Indexing

During the lifecycle of this issue, the Search Relations team should provide regular updates.

These updates should include more details about the issue, such as the scale or affected regions, a timeline for the next update, and progress toward resolving it.

We will continue monitoring the situation for updates expected within 24 hours. 

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