After hearing reports that the Google News team is working on fixing an issue, Google has confirmed it last night. Many publishers were either not showing up in Google News or had limited visibility in Google News over the past few weeks. Google confirmed this is an “ongoing issue with indexing in Google News that’s affecting all sites.”
Google posted, “There’s an ongoing issue with indexing in Google News that’s affecting all sites. Sites may be experiencing a decrease in traffic from Google News. We’re working on identifying the root cause. Next update will be within 24 hours.”
So this seems to be an “indexing” issues specific with Google News, and Google said “all sites.” I did not notice it impacting the sites in Google News that I have Search Console access to.
A Google Product Expert posted an update in a Google News Publisher Help Thread saying, “They received reports on this issue and right now the team is working on it. It’s a known issue that should gradually be fixed. Thanks for your patience and understanding while the issue is being worked on.”
The issue was that starting around June 21st or so, some publishers saw their Google News traffic and visibility significantly drop. The thread has its first report a week or so after the issue began from a German publisher who said their Google News visibility was cut off on June 23rd.
Since then, dozens of other publishers reported the same issue.
Here are some traffic drop charts from the thread:
