Late on Thursday, May 23, 2019, Google’s Webmasters Twitter account announced a new indexing issue, distinct from the previous day’s problem.
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."
Afterward, on Sunday, May 26, Google tweeted that the issue was resolved, saying: "This issue has been resolved — thanks for your patience! Wishing you all a great week."
Are Outages Due to Human Error?
Google has not provided specific details about the ongoing issues. Previously, I speculated these outages might stem from an infrastructure update that wasn’t deploying smoothly. Given Google’s sophistication, I hadn’t considered the possibility of their internal processes being vulnerable to simple human errors, such as uploading a flawed file or deleting a draft version of the index.
Credible rumors suggest the outages are not the result of an infrastructure update. I heard that the initial series of outages in April were due to human error. This matches reports from Barry at Search Engine Roundtable indicating the issues were unrelated to algorithmic or infrastructure changes.
The frequency of outages at Google is unprecedented. Further information from Google is anticipated, which should clarify the situation.
Some publishers responded with humor:
If the information I have received is accurate, some humorous responses to the outages might be closer to the truth.
