Google Sitemaps Report Bug May Show Huge Decline In Indexed Pages

The Google Search Console, aka Webmaster Tools, has a new bug that is concerning many webmasters and marketers. Many webmasters are noticing huge declines in the number of indexed pages being displayed in the Google Sitemaps report.

I’ve seen cases of hundreds of thousands of pages being displayed as no longer being indexed by Google. Here is a picture of one such report showing a huge drop in index counts on July 14, 2015:

There are dozens of examples, as I explained above.

Google is indeed aware of the issue and said they are working on resolving it. Gary Illyes from Google told me on Twitter “it’s confirmed” as a bug and the Google team is “working on it.”

So no need to panic if you’ve seen a decline in your index count in this report on July 14. It is just a reporting glitch and doesn’t affect your traffic or rankings in Google.

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 very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here.