As a global leader in SEO, content marketing, and data analytics, Anastasia Braitsik has navigated the industry’s most challenging technical hurdles. We sat down with her to discuss the recent month-long data delay in Google Search Console’s page indexing report, a period that left many digital marketers feeling like they were flying blind. Our conversation explores the practical impact of this data blackout, strategies for managing client expectations when the tools we rely on fail, and how to build a more resilient reporting framework to weather future disruptions.
The article notes the page indexing report was stuck on November 21st, preventing SEOs from verifying fixes. Can you describe a specific indexing “fix” you were unable to track during this delay and the step-by-step process you’re now using to validate its success with the new data?
Absolutely. We had just rolled out a major update to a client’s e-commerce site, correcting a series of canonicalization errors that were causing significant indexing problems. We pushed the fix live and submitted the changes for validation, but then the data just froze on November 21st. It was incredibly frustrating because we were completely in the dark, unable to confirm if Google was even seeing our changes. Now that the report is showing data up to December 14th, the first thing we did was dive back in. We are systematically filtering the report to those specific URLs, checking their new status, and cross-referencing it with the “last crawled” date to confirm that our fixes have not only been seen but have been correctly processed by Google.
With both the page indexing and performance reports experiencing delays, client communication was challenging. What was your strategy for managing stakeholder expectations during this data blackout, and what key metrics are you now prioritizing to catch up on reporting before the holidays?
Communication during that period was all about transparency and reassurance. We were proactive in letting our clients know that this was an issue with Google’s reporting tools, not a failure in our strategy or execution. It’s vital to explain that the work continues even when the data is delayed. Now that both the performance and page indexing reports are functional again, our immediate priority is to connect the dots for our end-of-year reports. We’re correlating the indexing fixes we made with the performance data from the same period to demonstrate a clear cause-and-effect relationship. The goal is to provide a complete, data-backed narrative before everyone heads out for the holiday season.
The report mentions that indexing issue emails have resumed alongside the data fix. Could you elaborate on the combined operational impact of losing both the reporting data and these proactive alerts, and walk us through the first three things you checked once both systems came back online?
Losing both was like losing your dashboard and your warning lights at the same time. The page indexing report is what we use to look back and analyze trends, but those automated emails are our real-time smoke detectors for new, critical issues. Without them, there’s a constant, nagging worry that a major problem could be brewing undetected. The moment we saw data flowing again, my team’s first three actions were immediate: first, we did a full audit of the page indexing report to identify any new errors that might have emerged during that month-long blackout. Second, we cross-referenced the performance report to see if any unexpected traffic drops aligned with potential new indexing problems. Finally, we triaged all the backlogged alert emails that came flooding in to ensure no high-priority fires needed to be put out immediately.
The author states that these reporting delays are “not that uncommon.” Do you have any advice for our readers on how to build a more resilient reporting strategy that can withstand these data gaps, perhaps using alternative tools for cross-verification?
My advice is to never put all your eggs in one basket. While Google Search Console is an indispensable tool, its data can be delayed, as we’ve just seen. A resilient strategy involves diversifying your data sources. You should be actively monitoring your server log files, as they give you the raw, unfiltered truth of when and how Googlebot is crawling your site. Supplement this with third-party crawl tools and rank trackers to get an outside perspective on how your pages are performing in search results. By combining these different data points, you create a more complete picture and are never left completely in the dark when one tool experiences an inevitable, and as the article notes, “not that uncommon” delay.
