SEOs and site owners are always complaining about indexing issues with Google Search. Why is this page not indexed, why is that page not indexed. But some seasoned SEOs are asking if Google is more picky about what it indexes in the past month or so, than it was maybe a year ago.
Pedro Dias, a former Googler, asked on X, “Is everyone noticing Google de-indexing URLs randomly at a higher rate since the beginning of April?”
And, as you’d expect, most people said yes. Cory replied, “Seems to be a regular occurrence with updates. Some type of freshness/stale evaluation and quality component. Purge garbage to reduce the index size.” Valentin Pletzer replied, “Interesting. I checked several URLs (site:https://…) and I found all of the ones I checked. I wonder if there is some kind of reporting bug?” Alex Gramm replied, “I have noticed that since December 2025. It looks interesting and weird at the same time. Only two pages in Google’s index, media websites.” The post has tons of people saying yes, they see the same thing.
I asked John Mueller from Google about this and he said “I don’t see anything exceptional there.”
Some sites go up, some sites go down – I don’t see anything exceptional there.
— John Mueller (@johnmu.com) April 30, 2026 at 6:15 AM
Some even uploaded screenshots of their Google Search Console page indexing reports:
What are you all seeing here? I assume, you would all agree.
I suspect, with all the AI content being pushed out, that Google is getting pickier…
Forum discussion at X.
