Google Successfully Resolves Indexing Bug Affecting Google News

Google has acknowledged and resolved an ongoing issue with its News indexing that resulted in numerous publishers experiencing considerable traffic reductions. This problem spanned a three-week period, commencing from June 21st.

Update on the situation

Google provided an update at 5:06 pm ET today, stating, “The issue with News indexing has been fixed. No further updates will be issued.”

The problem was initially detected by Google on July 10th, the specific cause was identified the following day, and a resolution was applied on July 12th. Following the implementation of this fix, publishers started reporting noticeable improvements.

Google has now confirmed the efficacy of the fix. News publishers can expect their traffic to revert to mid-July levels.

The importance of this issue

In case you noticed a dip in traffic from Google News to your site over the past few weeks, it's highly likely this was due to the aforementioned Google News indexing bug. Google addressed the problem today, and normal traffic volumes from Google News should have resumed.