Google Search bug caused a drop in video traffic

Google has confirmed a bug in Google Search that resulted in a drop in traffic to video content between the dates of May 4 through May 17, 2023. This was not just a Google Search Console reporting bug, but a bug with Google Search.

What Google wrote. Google posted, “A bug caused a drop in video traffic from May 4 to May 17, and has since been resolved.”

I asked John Mueller of Google if this was just a reporting glitch, and he said no, it was beyond reporting. “It was not just reporting,” he told me on Mastodon.

Search Console reports. If you go to Google Search Console, click on the search performance report, and filter it by “video” content, you will see an annotation added to the chart on May 4:

Why we care. If you noticed a drop in traffic between May 4 through May 17 and you publish a lot of video content, it may be related to this bug.

In this case, the reporting was not the issue and the reports should be accurate. There was a bug with Google Search that resulted in less videos showing up in the search results.