Google’s search algorithm suffered an unusual glitch that affected search results. Many in the search community believed it was an update. It was not an update.
John Mueller of Google tweeted:
“I do not have all the details yet, but it looks like this was a glitch on our part and in the meantime is fixed.”
Google Search Outage was worldwide
The station was widely felt in Europe as well as Asia and all English-speaking countries.
Google’s search glitch appeared to affect all languages, countries, and niches. It affects everything from local services to recipes. E-commerce sites report extreme fluctuations in rankings.
Reduce search results
Recipe blog SEO Casey Markee (@MediaWyse) https://twitter.com/MediaWyse tweeted a screenshot of how bad the search results of the recipe were.
The carousels are f ** ked. Look at this one for “baked beans” it’s all over the place. I have several other examples. Good times. pic.twitter.com/avxxu10Fed
– Casey Markee (@MediaWyse) 11 August 2020
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Joe Youngblood (@YoungbloodJoe) tweeted that he saw a Minnesota company ranking for a search in Dallas.
A company in Minnesota ranking for “Dallas SEO” lol
Joe Youngblood @YoungbloodJoe 11 August 2020
Google Search Glitch created poor search results
Google’s search results were incredibly poor, some to the point of being useless.
I was trying to search for an article from a particular page and Google would not show it to me even when I used the name of the page that contained the article.
It felt a bit like in the old days when PageRank had a stronger influence.
WebmasterWorld had great real-time coverage of the glitch when it happened.
A member of WebmasterWorld, webdev29, notes how big sites like Amazon dominate the SERPs.
“Enormous update also in France ATM, no word to describe the mess, it’s just crazy! There are no more e-brands in my SERP (decoration) and mine has just lost everything … 6 years ruined in just one minute and the lives of several employees at stake! it’s not possible to continue like this, in the SERP there are only the big market places (cdiscount, amazon, laredoute, aliexpress …) and some more or less recent sites without much interest … everything else is disappeared on the deep pages of the search engine. ”
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Report of Italy
WebmasterWorld member teokolo shared:
“Italy seems like a big update here.
Every niche I follow is messaged. Stores are gone, affiliate sites are gone, scarves are full of Amazon, ebay and news sites. ”
Google Outage in Norway
mini_007 said:
“Wow insane big update here in Norway, never seen such a big change.”
Massive fluctuations in Google search results
Whether it was on Facebook, WebmasterWorld or Twitter, the common observation was that there were massive fluctuations in the search results.
This report from WebmasterWorld member Whoa182 is typical:
‘What the hell?
Just noticed that my articles have gone from page 1 to page 7+
Looks like it’s just happened the last few hours! A few more of my competitors have all disappeared from the SERPs.
Edit: Okay, it’s just massive fluctuations in side positions. One minute it’s on page 1, the next it’s on page 7 or whatever, and then it’s back. ”
Google has not yet explained the cause
Google’s Danny Sullivan is the one who typically announces updates.
Webmaster Trends Analysts Gary Illyes and John Mueller also share announcements of changes at Google, including glitches.
In early 2020, for example, Google suffered a glitch that caused a problem with Google’s index. It was Gary Illyes who made the statement.
So far we have only heard of John Mueller. Danny Sullivan took the day off.
Google suffered a massive glitch that caused search results around the world to become less useful. The cause of the dismissal is not yet known.
