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How do you google what’s going on if Google is down? That’s exactly what happened last night.
Google Search had a global outage that lasted for about half an hour and today, we’re seeing the consequences. Google apologized for the inconvenience and a spokesperson said they have been working quickly to return things back to normal as soon as possible, the Guardian reports.
Of course, Gmail, Google maps and Google images were also affected.
How am I supposed to Google “Is Google down” when Google is down?!? #google — Amber Kelsey (@AmberKelseyy) August 9, 2022
So what happened?
A fire happened, according to Search Engine Land. Apparently, there was a fire at a Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, resulting in injuries to some workers and Google Search issues. Google is aware of what happened and John Mueller even tweeted how things should go back to normal after restoration.
I’d keep an eye on it today, and please let me know if it doesn’t look like the main URLs are settling down again. (We don’t index everything, so I’d focus on the important URLs for things like this.) — 🥔 johnmu of switzerland (personal) 🥔 (@JohnMu) August 9, 2022
So what does that mean?
It means that – if you notice any ranking changes or anything out of the ordinary this could be the reason behind it. The biggest things will go back to their previous state, but it’s hard to predict how long it will take for everything to go back to what it was before the fire.
The issues
Barry Schwartz shared some screenshots on the Search Engine Roundtable. He reports seeing more issues regarding search quality, including:
Outages and inaccessibility of Google Search
Old pages dropping out of Google Search
New pages not being indexed by Google Search
Google Search results look stale and outdated
Huge ranking fluctuations
Google is back up now, according to Downdetector.com. At the peak of the outage, over 30,000 US users reported issues with Google. Now, there are about 500 incidents reported.
Never experienced a Google search outage before… 🤯 pic.twitter.com/5hksKw7hJp — Rachael Piotrowski (@RachaelPiotPR) August 9, 2022
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