When Pages Drop Out of Google for a Week

Pages that vanished at the weekend

Late last week, some site owners noticed pages missing from Google. A services page that had appeared for the same searches for years was suddenly nowhere to be found.

On Saturday, Google confirmed that a bug had removed some pages from its index, the list of pages it can show in results. On Monday it said it was still working on the fix.

Since then, affected pages have been returning. Some owners spent the weekend refreshing search results, and a few started changing their sites.

This week is for checking properly, and for resisting the urge to fix what was never broken on your side.

What the bug meant and what it did not

Being dropped from the index is different from slipping in the rankings. A page that is not indexed cannot appear for any search at all until it is added back.

This was not a penalty, and it was not a core update. Nothing about the affected pages caused it, which also means nothing done to those pages will cure it.

As Google's fix rolls out, pages return without anybody doing anything. Your job is to confirm the important ones are back, not to rework them for a system that briefly mislaid them.

Checks that mislead

• A site: search, whose result counts are rough estimates.
• Searching your business name, which mostly tests the home page.
• Searching on your own phone, where your history shapes the results.
• A rank-checking tool, which reports positions rather than whether a page is indexed.
• Asking a friend to search, which tests one place at one moment.

The first is the one people reach for, and it was never designed as a diagnostic. Its counts swing from day to day, and it can leave out pages that are indexed perfectly well.

Checking a page properly

Search Console's URL Inspection tool gives a direct answer for one address at a time. Paste the full address of the page into the bar at the top and wait a few seconds.

It reports either that the URL is on Google or that it is not, with the date Google last crawled the page and, where relevant, the reason it was left out.

If an important page is missing, the same screen offers a button to request indexing. There is a daily limit, so use it for the pages that bring in work rather than the whole site.

The Coverage report

The Coverage report shows, as a chart, how many of your pages Google has indexed over time, alongside lists of the pages it has excluded and why.

It runs a few days behind, so a dip from the weekend may not have appeared yet, and the recovery will show later still.

Over the next fortnight, look for two things: a dip matching the dates followed by a return to the usual level, and any new reason for exclusion appearing in the lists.

Whether it cost you anything

Indexing tells you whether a page could appear. Traffic tells you whether its absence mattered.

In the Performance report, compare clicks by page for the last few days against the same days a week earlier. Comparing Saturday with Saturday avoids mistaking an ordinary weekend dip for damage.

A page missing for a day or two over a weekend may have cost a handful of visits. That is worth knowing before deciding anything.

A worked example

A farm stay on Vancouver Island, with two guest cottages on a working farm, gets most of its summer bookings from families searching for a farm holiday on the island.

On Saturday, the owner searched for the cottages page and could not find it. A site: search showed far fewer pages than usual, and the instinct was to rewrite the page and change its title.

Instead, the owner opened Search Console. URL Inspection said the cottages page was not on Google, while the home page and the booking page were fine.

The owner requested indexing for the cottages page, changed nothing else, and added a note in Analytics marking the dates.

By Monday, the inspection reported the page was on Google again. The rewrite never happened, and the next change to the site will be made for a reason.

Why not to change anything this week

Changes made during a known problem make it impossible to learn anything. If a page returns on Tuesday after you rewrote it on Monday, you cannot tell which caused what.

Some changes carry real risk. A redirect, a deleted and recreated page, a new address or a tag telling search engines to stay away can each cause the very problem you were worried about.

Resubmitting a sitemap every few hours does not speed anything up either. Google already knows the pages; it is repairing its own records.

Write down what happened

Add an annotation in Analytics for the days the pages were missing. Next April, somebody comparing this year with last will see a dip and wonder what went wrong.

Note it wherever you keep the site's yearly record as well. Odd weeks are much easier to explain when they are written down at the time.

The counter-case

Not every missing page is the bug.

If an important page is still missing after a week or two, the cause is probably on your side.

URL Inspection will usually name it: a leftover noindex tag, a canonical tag naming another page as the original, a redirect or server errors. Those are worth fixing promptly with whoever maintains the site.

And a site with no Search Console property cannot check any of this. Setting one up now, as a domain property covering every version of the address, is the useful job for this week.

For everyone else: check the pages that matter, request indexing where needed, and change nothing in a panic.

This week

1. List the ten pages that bring you work.
2. Inspect each one in Search Console.
3. Request indexing only where a page is missing.
4. Compare clicks with the same days last week.
5. Annotate the dates in Analytics.
6. Change nothing else on the site.
7. Inspect any missing page again next Monday.

Step six is the hardest and the most important. A week of nervous edits can turn a problem Google is already fixing into one only you can fix.

The same patience is the right response to Google's larger changes, covered in what to do the week a core update lands.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.