The Google outage on August 8th, 2022, caused significant disruptions for many businesses and website owners who rely on Google for traffic.
The outage appears to have been caused by a software update, which caused problems with the indexing system. As a result, pages have dropped out of the search results, and poor quality or outdated results have been served. It has caused significant volatility in the SERPs, with some websites experiencing significant traffic drops and others experiencing slight increases.
What are others saying?
Several SEO experts and webmasters have noticed fluctuations in search result rankings and have taken to twitter to share their observations. The outages appear to be concentrated in the United States and Europe, but we’ve received reports from all over the world.
Google has issued an apology for the outage.
A Google spokesperson apologized for the outage, saying:
We are aware of the software update issue that occurred late this afternoon Pacific Time and briefly affected Google search and Maps availability.
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. We worked quickly to resolve the issue, and our services are now operational again.
What Comes Next: Dealing with the Outage?
If your SERPs are fluctuating, it’s critical to remain calm and carry on. These things happen now and then, and they usually don’t last long. In the meantime, all you can do is keep an eye on your rankings and wait for things to calm down. When you connect Rank Math Analytics to your Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts, you can monitor the SEO performance of your website directly from the dashboard.
How frequently does Google issue updates?
Google generally releases updates every two weeks.
Google has traditionally released updates every few months. It equates to two to three updates per year. Through these constant updates, we can see how Google has focused on providing the best possible search experience. The December 2019 Core Update was Google’s largest update to date.
The September 2019 update was not well received by webmasters and SEO specialists, who claimed it had less of an impact than previous updates.
Why are updates necessary?
When Google makes an update, it affects your site’s SEO rankings, allowing it to perform better or worse. SEO rankings suffer as a result. Knowing when Google sends updates allows us to adapt to its algorithm and become more aware of site changes.
You should check your page’s rankings and analytics after each Google update. It will allow you to see what has changed and make data-driven decisions to assist your marketing, web, and analytics teams.
Assume your website receives a lower number in its monthly rankings. You notice a decrease in the number of page views in Google Analytics. It may indicate that your website requires more engaging blog posts or videos to rank higher in Google’s algorithm.
What Comes Next: Dealing with the Outage
If your SERPs are fluctuating, it’s critical to remain calm and carry on. These things happen now and then, and they usually don’t last long. In the meantime, all you can do is keep an eye on your rankings and wait for things to calm down.