<\/p>\n
Google confirmed a search ranking bug, a “very small issue” it called, that affected a “small number of websites” where those rankings would drop out of Google Search results over the weekend and then reappear during weekdays.<\/p>\n
Google statement.<\/strong> A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that this issue has now been resolved and only affected a “small number of websites”. Google wrote:<\/p>\n We are aware of a very limited issue that caused temporary fluctuations in search results for a small number of websites. The issue has since been resolved and sites should no longer see the effects.<\/p>\n The question. <\/strong>The problem appeared to affect sites that were on top-level domains, top-level domains, and non-standard domains. These TLDs ended in .club, .consulting, .life and other non-standard TLDs. Some of these sites noticed that they stopped ranking entirely on the weekends. Initially, I thought so<\/a> it was a quality issue, being on the edge of quality, or a bug with Google Search. But it turned out to be a bug with Google Search.<\/p>\n The first person I saw cover this was Tomasz Rudzki ZipTie<\/a>. In short, he wrote: “On the weekends, something weird kept happening: the website would completely lose rankings and traffic. People couldn’t even find it when they searched for it by name.”<\/p>\n What was interesting is that these ranking issues coincided with several unconfirmed Google updates that occurred over the weekend. He said: “9 out of 9 examples were non-standard TLDs such as .consultancy (example.consultancy), .care (example.care), .club, .info, .energy. The dates he shared matched the algorithm updates that I reported He said these were the dates:<\/p>\n Example of ranking chart. <\/strong>Here’s an example of a ranking chart showing the drop in Google Organic Search weekend performance:<\/p>\n Why we care<\/strong> This issue appears to have persisted since November 2023, but now a few months later, following these reports, Google has resolved the issue.<\/p>\n If you’ve been seeing strange ranking issues over the weekends and you’re in one of these non-standard TLDs, this may have affected you. I noticed these Google search ranking updates over the weekend stopped for the last week or so<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hopefully, you won’t see it ahead. <\/p>\n