Google confirms bug with Google News impacting publisher traffic

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.

Postscript: On July 12th, Google fixed the issue and is now verifying that the fix is working as intended. Google wrote, “We’ve identified the issue with News indexing and have implemented a fix. We’re monitoring the situation to confirm that this resolves the issue.”

John Mueller from Google added, “It seems pretty fixed now, we’re just a bit cautious about giving an early all-clear.”

Later on July 14th, Google has confirmed the fix is complete and done.