Google confirmed serving issue with Google Search results

Jason December 16, 2021 0 Comments

Google said “there’s an ongoing issue with our serving system in Google Search that’s affecting a small number of sites,” on Twitter this morning. Google confirmed at 11:30am ET, that it fixed the issue. The issue started at about 4:30am ET and lasted several hours.

The tweet. Here is the tweet so you can read it yourself:

There’s an ongoing issue with our serving system in Google Search that’s affecting a small number of sites.
We’re working on fixing the root cause. Next update will be within 12 hours. ^gi

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 16, 2021

What is the issue. At around 4:30am there were reports, which I covered on the Search Engine Roundtable, that Google was having issues indexing or crawling or serving new content from both major and smaller publishers. I showed screenshots of Google not showing new content from publishers like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and niche publishers like TechCrunch and The Verge.

Here are some of those screenshots:

But then at around 6:30am ET, it seemed like Google fixed the issue. Well, it seems Google did not fully resolve the issue because now the company officially confirmed the issue on Twitter.

Smaller publishers? If I look at what Google indexed on my personal site in the past 24 hours, it shows a story from yesterday, that was published before Google had these serving issues. And a story that I manually pushed to Google using the request indexing issue in Search Console. It does not show the several other stories I published this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable.

But even now, if I do a site command for wsj.com and filter to show stories in the past hour, I am still seeing the issue, after I thought it was resolved:

Resolved. Google has fixed the issue at around 11:30am ET today, here are the notifications Google posted about this:

We fixed the issue with our serving system. Newly published URLs should show up in search results at normal rates. There will be no more updates. ^gi

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 16, 2021

Why we care. If you are having issues with Google now showing your recent content in Google Search today, December 16, 2021, do not worry, it seems to be an issue on Google’s end. Google is working on resolving it.

Until then, I guess try to use Google Search Console to push your content into Google Search and hope that works. Also it is a time to remind you that having other channels to drive traffic to your site, like social media, email marketing, direct traffic and other means is important.

Now that it is fixed, you should now see your content showing up in Google Search.

The post Google confirmed serving issue with Google Search results appeared first on Search Engine Land.

AboutJason Richardson

Jason specializes in digital marketing strategies and founded a digital marketing agency Richardson Digital Media™. Richardson Digital Media™ has quickly become a preferred marketing provider for real estate companies and nationwide mortgage lenders. Jason has won 9 President’s Circle of Excellence Awards for loan production over his career and was most recently honored as one of National Mortgage Professional Magazine’s “40 Under 40: The 40 Most Influential Mortgage Professionals.”