Google looks to be suffering from a significant algorithm glitch on the 9th August 2022.
The glitch which started to appear at around 12pm (AEST) on the 9th August is affecting all search engine results and causing wild fluctuations in rankings across all industries.
The Guardian reported at 2.12am BST (9.12pm EST, 11.12AM AEST) that more than 4,000 problems had been logged with Google for outages across various Google platforms including Google Search, Google Workspaces, and Gmail.
This is (by far) the largest glitch that we have seen in Google search results since the Google Algorithm Glitch from August 10th 2020.
What is going on with search results?
From what we can gather, the search results are in a bit of a state at the moment. Highly competitive search terms are showing LinkedIn Profiles, Tweets, and low-quality links from random corners of the internet.
From our early analysis, it looks as though large sites like Amazon, Twitter, and Facebook are disproportionately represented for competitive keywords.
How did you find out about this?
As an SEO Agency, we first noticed the changes to the search results shortly after 12pm when we were conducting routine keyword checks for clients and competitors. The checks revealed some huge, unexplainable fluctuations across every industry that we checked.
We’re not sure how long it will take Google to recover from this glitch, or how long the search results will look like this. Google obviously has a strong interest in Getting things back to normal as quickly as possible, so we would suggest that their engineers are working overtime at the moment to rectify this glitch/outage.
How long will this glitch last for?
Well, assuming that this is simply an outage and not part of Google pushing forward a new search ranking algorithm, we would expect this to last anywhere from 24 to 48-hours. As we saw when this occurred in 2020, the search results were in a state of disarray for a little over a day before things seemingly returned to normal as though nothing had happened.
What should I do now?
Nothing! Do not make any changes to your website or assume that you have been individually penalised. As we mentioned, this looks to be a global outage that is impacting search results globally. We recommend leaving your website as it is and waiting to see where the ball lands on this one.
If history is anything to go by, we expect the search results to return to their pre-midday 9th August (AEST) state in the next 1-2 days. While it is impossible to say how long it will take, we do have a precedent to work with. When this happened back in 2020, John Mueller issued a statement to confirm the glitch – we expect to see something similar over the next day or two.
Online speculation
There is plenty of speculation happening on Twitter and various SEO forums. While some webmasters and SEOs look to be celebrating some of the SERP movements, we would stress that it is unlikely that things will stay in their current position.
What Now?
Sit tight and keep checking the search engine results. As we mentioned, things are a bit all over the place at the moment. We recommend keeping a close eye on a few different industries to see how long it takes for things to return to normal. Keep an eye on Google news and the latest developments. We would suggest that there will be a number of news articles over the coming hours that indicate as/when the problem is resolved.
