Google not indexing recent content?

(Update: On May 23 Google said the issue is now resolved.)

If you try to find new content from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or your favorite search news site Search Engine Land using Google, you might not find anything. A potential bug with Google search this morning is not bringing up content from many news outlets posted within the past hour.

Screenshots. Here are some screenshots showing that when you filter the results to show content within the past hour, nothing is returned from these sites:

One hour filter. Just to be clear, you need to filter the Google search results to just show pages found within the past hour. Google otherwise will show you content, but just not within the past hour. It’s not just site command searches that aren’t working properly, either. Searches for “search engine land” and “nytimes” with the past hour filter on bring up entirely unrelated results. 

A bug? This appears to be a bug but we are not sure if this is an indexing bug, a bug with Google’s search filters and tools or something else. We emailed Google for a statement.

Why it matters. If you are publishing timely and fresh content around news topics, searchers using Google may not be able to find this content.

Google recent bugs. Just last month, Google was plagued with de-indexing issues across the Google index. The Search Console reports had lost data as a result and the cache is not right. In addition, Google had an issue with selecting the right canonical URL and also had an indexing issue with Google News. It has been a tough couple of months for Google search.

Confirmed. At 9:15am ET Google has confirmed there is an issue and Google is currently working on fixing the issue.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.