Google Bug Aug 10, 2020
On August 10th, 2020 at roughly 4:00 P.M. MST just about every SEO around the globe feared their careers had come to an abrupt end.
Chatter erupted around the internet regarding what was perceived to be one of Google’s BIGGEST and botched algorithm updates to date.
Big Google search ranking algorithm update just touched down (not confirmed and super early) https://t.co/E6LdUB4e9T pic.twitter.com/SDTzCko3fo
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 10, 2020
Terrible update. Entire page 1 results completely altered, showing irrelevant/poor results. This is some crazy **it
— Ben Rush (@bendrush) August 10, 2020
The perceived update results were so bad it became obvious to most that this had to be some kind of bug on Google’s behalf.
The bug or ‘glitch’ was fixed around 1:30AM MST.
On Monday we detected an issue with our indexing systems that affected Google search results. Once the issue was identified, it was promptly fixed by our Site Reliability Engineers and by now it has been mitigated.
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) August 11, 2020
Thank you for your patience!
Google’s Webmasters Twitter account discussed the issue with their indexing system stating the issue was detected and promptly fixed.
wasn't me, i swear https://t.co/OOi6RZwaum
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (@methode) August 11, 2020
Google’s Gary Illyes quickly dismissed any association with the bug.
For me, the indicator that this was no an algo update was when various queries like ‘Pizza Near Me’ showed results from the UK. Based on what I was seeing it appears the bug may have been related to geographical targeting. I could be wrong, but that seems to be the biggest issue with the bug yesterday.
SEOs, your job lives for another day. Hopefully Google won’t drop another scare like that anytime soon. It’s pretty safe to stay everyone in the space was a little freaked out yesterday.