On 11 September 2026, the "Pages" report in Google Search Console, the one that counts a site's indexed and non-indexed pages, lost several days of June 2026 across every property. Flagged that morning on Bluesky by Dan Lauer and picked up by Search Engine Roundtable, the gap was explained by John Mueller of Google: those days match the period in June when the report had stalled, and "we don't back-fill indexing data". For a company that tracks its indexed pages month after month, June 2026 will remain a blank on the curve, while the actual indexing of its pages has not moved.
The facts
- Dan Lauer posted the first report on Bluesky on 11 September ("The data was there yesterday?"). Barry Schwartz picked it up at 9:17 am on Search Engine Roundtable, then at 10:18 am on Search Engine Land: the "Pages" report shows a gap of several days over June 2026, on every property, and the incident affects the report's display, with no link to the indexing of the sites concerned.
- John Mueller's reply, the same day on Bluesky: "This is likely from the time in June where the data was delayed - there just isn't any data for that period, the page indexing report wasn't updated. We don't back-fill indexing data. I'll check w/the team when they're back from holidays to be sure." The gap would therefore come from the June delay, no data exists for that period, Google does not back-fill indexing data, and Mueller will check with the team when they are back from holidays.
- That delay is documented. The "Pages" report stayed frozen on the data of 11 June for more than three weeks (Search Engine Roundtable, 25 June). On 1 July, Mueller apologised without a recovery date; on 3 July, the report was updated through 29 June, with flattened curves over the recovered period, then stalled a second time until 27 July. Google had specified that the delay had no link to the June spam update.
- Three days earlier, during the night of 8 to 9 September, the same report had classified indexed pages, homepages included, as "Crawled - currently not indexed" for about an hour, before Mueller confirmed on Bluesky a "short blip" resolved overnight, reminding everyone that a URL inspection is enough to check whether a homepage is indexed. Three reporting incidents in three months, two of them in the same week.
How do you read a Search Console curve that dives without concluding too fast?
The "Pages" report counts, day by day, the indexed URLs and the excluded ones, with the reason for each exclusion. It updates with a lag of a few days, and it cannot be exported through the Search Console API: what an advertiser keeps of it depends on its CSV exports or its screenshots. The June gap removes no page from Google's index. It removes a slice of the history many teams use to compare one month with another, or to date the start of a decline. That slice has just disappeared for everyone, and Google has said it will not recreate it.
A real drop in indexing leaves traces in several sources at once. The performance report, which was not affected, then shows falling impressions on the pages concerned. URL inspection confirms, page by page, whether the addresses that matter are still in the index. Crawl stats, and server logs when the company has access to them, show whether Googlebot still comes by. A reporting artefact, by contrast, stays locked inside a single report, appears on every property at the same time, and gets flagged by other accounts within hours, as on 11 September on Bluesky and then on Search Engine Roundtable.
For a marketing manager, the method comes down to four checks before raising the alarm internally: is the performance report intact over the same period, do the ten pages that generate revenue still inspect as indexed, do other properties or other accounts show the same gap, and does the "Data anomalies in Search Console" page, which Google updates during its reporting incidents, mention the period. A curve that dives alone, in a single tool, on the same day for everyone, describes the tool. A curve that dives in several tools describes the site.
AIxH's view
Twenty-seven years of Google Ads and Search Console reports have taught us that a measurement tool is worth what the data it displays that day is worth. Our SEO audits start with a cross-check, performance report, inspection of the pages that matter, server logs when the client has them, before any conclusion about a decline. The 11 September episode adds one instruction: archive the number of indexed pages and their exclusion reasons every month, because Google has just said it does not recreate what it has lost. If your team was alarmed this week by a chart with a hole in it, our SEO agency in Luxembourg can re-read your summer curves with you.
