Late Thursday May 23, 2019, Google’s Webmasters Twitter account tweeted that Google is suffering a new indexing problem that is completely separate from the previous day’s indexing issue.
Here is the text of the tweet:
We’re looking into a new indexing issue that started escalating 6 hours ago. The issue is unrelated to yesterday’s outage and we’re working hard to resolve it. We’ll update this thread when we can provide more information.
Are Outages Due to Human Error?
Google again did not provide details of what is going on. I have previously speculated that these outages have been due to an infrastructure update that wasn’t rolling out well.
I have recently heard a credible rumor (not directly from Google) that the outages are not due to an infrastructure update. What I was told was that the first series of outages were due to human error.
What I was told seems to align with what Barry at Search Engine Roundtable reported he was told that the indexing issues were unrelated to algorithmic or infrastructure updates.
If what Barry was told is true, then that means the rumor that human error is behind the recent Google outages might be true.
The level of outages at Google is 100% without precedent. Google is promising more information. It will be interesting to hear what is really going on.
Some publishers responded with humor:
If what I have heard (not directly from Google) is correct, that tweet might not be too far from the truth. Monitor the official Google updates on Twitter here.
