Google has confirmed it’s aware of indexing issues affecting content in Google News.
The company says this is not related to the Google Search indexing issue, which was resolved last week.
We’re aware of some indexing issues with Google News content. It appears to involve a limited number of publishers. We’re actively diagnosing the news issue now. This is not related to last week’s indexing issue, which was resolved.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 16, 2019
As stated by Google’s Danny Sullivan in the tweet above, the issue is currently being diagnosed.
Based on the company’s recent track record, I expect we’ll see further updates as soon as Google figures out when the problem might be fixed.
In the meantime, I would imagine there’s nothing publishers can do until Google fixes the issue on their end.
Google News vs. Google Search
Google News isn’t like Google Search where you can re-submit pages for indexing with the URL inspection tool. Google is more selective about the content it allows in the Google News index.
In addition to following the webmaster guidelines, publishers in Google News also have to adhere to a unique set of content policies and technical guidelines.
If a publisher has met all those requirements they then have to submit a request for inclusion in the Google News index.
The request is reviewed by the Google News team who decides if a website is accepted or rejected.
So if you have not gone through those steps your content will not be indexed in Google News, in which case you do not have to worry about this indexing problem.
Publishers that have been accepted into Google News should not panic just yet, because Google says this issue is only affecting a limited number of sites.
To know for sure if you’re affected by this bug look up your site in Google News and see if it’s indexing your latest content.
I checked several sites and noticed that its affecting content published within the last 24 hours or so.
So it’s not as though a publisher’s entire library of content is getting removed from the service. Just the most recent articles.
I’ll publish another update as soon as we hear more from Google.
