Google has confirmed an issue with indexing content from news publishers and surfacing that content in Google News. Google said it is working to fix the issue but the issue may result in a decrease in traffic from Google News.
Google’s statement. Google posted a statement in the Google Search status report saying, “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.”
John Mueller of Google posted about this on Twitter:
Can impact traffic. There are a number of publishers complaining about significant traffic issues with Google News. Some publishers are reporting really bad traffic results, as you can see from this Google News Publisher help thread.
Why we care. If your site is in Google News and you noticed a traffic drop from Google News over the past few weeks, it might be related to this Google News indexing bug.
Google is now aware of the issue and is working on fixing it going forward.
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Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.