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Google Goes Down Briefly

Danny Sullivan on August 16, 2013 at 6:57 pm

Down For Everyone Or Just Me -> Check if your website is down or up?

Google down, as verified by Down For Everyone Or Just Me?

It wasn’t you. It was Google. Specifically, Google.com went down around 3:50pm PT for about five minutes, a very rare occurrence. Other Google services also appear to have had issues.

We’ll update if we hear more, but it appears back now. It certainly sparked brief panic on Twitter. Twitter search service Topsy tweeted a chart showing the sudden spike in tweets:

The last time something even close to this happened was probably in January 2009, when for about 40 minutes, Google labeled every site in its results as malware, due to a human error.

There were some reports on Twitter that Google Drive, Gmail and other Google services also went down briefly, though the Google App Status Dashboard didn’t list any problems.

Postscript (5pm PT): Google sent us this:

We have received reports of an issue affecting some Google services. The issue is now resolved. Please follow our dashboard for more information: http://www.google.com/appsstatus

The dashboard now has small red dots in the 8/16/13 column to indicate a problem happened today for major Google services:

When you select a service, you get virtually the same message like this one for Gmail:

We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior. We will provide an update by 8/16/13 5:37 PM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. The incident lasted 1-5 minutes.

Stay tuned for more.

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.