Google Claims ‘Glitch’ Disrupted Search Results Globally

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

Tech giant Google’s flagship product, Google Search, claims a major ‘glitch” has disrupted search results. Users around the world reported bizarre results to searches, such as a concentration of links to major e-commerce companies like Amazon and wildly inaccurate responses to requests for recipes.  It is currently believed that the issue has been fixed but Google has yet to release the full details of the supposed error.

Search Engine Journal reports that Google’s search algorithm suffered what it claims is a major glitch recently that negatively affected search results. Initially, some believed it to be the result of an update pushed by Google, but the company has since announced that the affected search results were the result of an error.

John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google tweeted that the issue was caused by a Glitch at Google and a fix had been issued:

When asked if he would be providing further information, Mueller replied “I don’t have all the details yet, so it’s hard to say.” The issue was noticed by Recipe Blog SEO Casey Markee who tweeted a screenshot of badly ranked recipe search results:

Users on SEO forum WebmasterWorld discussed what they initially believed to be an update from Google, leaving many shocked. One user named webdev29 commented:

“huge update also in France ATM, no word to describe the mess, its simply crazy ! there is no more ecommerces in my SERP (decoration) and mine has just lost everything…6 years destroyed in just one minute and the lives of several employees at stake! it’s not possible that it continues like this, in the SERP, there are only the big marketplaces (cdiscount, amazon, laredoute, aliexpress…) and some more or less recent sites without much interest…all the rest has disappeared on the deep pages of the search engine.”

Another user named Teokolo commented:

“Seems like a big update in progress here in Italy. Every niche I follow is messed up. Shops are gone, affiliate sites have disappeared, serps are full of Amazon, ebay and news sites.”

User Whoa182 commented that the update had severely affected his articles in Google Search:

“What the hell is going on?

Just noticed my articles have gone from page 1 to page 7+

Seems to have just happened in the past few hours! Quite a few of my competitors have all disappeared from the SERPs.

Edit: Okay, it’s just massive fluctuations in page positions. One minute it’s on page 1, next it’s page 7 or whatever, and then back again.”

Google has yet to fully explain the issue aside from an analyst stating that it’s a glitch not an update. Breitbart News will update readers as more information is available.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

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