SEO

Bug? Google Sitemap index counts drop across Search Console reports

Many publishers and webmasters are seeing huge drops in the reported index count in the Google Search Console sitemaps report. It seems like a widespread bug.

Barry Schwartz on May 13, 2016 at 9:10 am

There are widespread reports of webmasters complaining that the sitemap report in the Google Search Console shows a significant drop in the number of pages indexed over the past 24 hours.

Many webmasters see in this report that the number of pages Google says they have indexed on their website is now about 25 percent lower than it was the day before. Of course, the fewer pages indexed, the less opportunity to rank for more pages and keyword phrases.

Here is a screen shot of my report, but all the screen shots I’ve seen circulating look similar:

Google has not commented on this issue, but I wanted to report it so those who are worried can know they are in good company and that this seems to be a bug on Google’s end.

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About The Author

Barry Schwartz

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's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.