Site owners and SEOs rely on Google Search Console reporting to provide insight into index coverage. The report shows the index status for all the pages on a website.
The Search Console groups the pages based on whether they are — or can be — indexed. It also includes a description of why the search engine crawler could or could not index a specific page.
Site owners use the tool to periodically scan for spikes in errors or possible drops in index counts. That way, they can identify and address crawling problems on a website.
However, this Search Console function is currently experiencing an issue.
According to Google, the tool is affected by a problem causing delays in updating the Index Coverage report. The search giant has confirmed the search console reporting issue via a Twitter post yesterday.
It reads:
“We’re currently experiencing longer than usual delays in the Search Console Index Coverage report. This only affects reporting, not crawling, indexing, or ranking of websites. We’ll update here once this issue is resolved. Thanks for your patience!”
https://twitter.com/googlewmc/status/1305433934373806080
Note that the issue only impacts reporting on the Search Console.
In other words, Google can still crawl, index, or rank web pages whenever it wants. However, the Index Coverage report may not reflect recently published pages, even though the search engine has indexed them.
Now, for the obvious question:
When Will Google Fix the Search Console Reporting Issue?
It’s difficult to say. This is especially true because Google hasn’t provided an accurate estimation.
Currently, the Index Coverage report suggests that it was last updated on August 31.
But, Google’s John Mueller didn’t acknowledge the issues until September 9, stating that the report should be up-to-date “soon.” That was six days ago, and site owners are still waiting.
Until Google restores the Index Coverage report’s functions, you could use the “site.” operator in Google Search to check whether the search engine has indexed a specific page.
For example, if you recently published a page on content writing tips, you could type the following into the query box,
- content writing tips site: your-domain.com
You’ll know whether Google is indexing your page if the “site.” operator feature provides the appropriate result. Yet, the Index Coverage report is undoubtedly more convenient.
We’ll update the article when Google resolves the issue.
Comments (0)
Most Recent