#Google Search Console reporting error for product snippets
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You may have noticed a spike in impressions and clicks between May 15 to May 27 – it was a bug.
This is just a reporting issue and has no impact and real Google Search rankings.
More details. A week ago, we noticed a weird spike in impressions and clicks for product snippets. Some thought it might be related to AI Overviews, but John Mueller from Google said it is unlikely related to that. He wrote:
The folks here are looking into the details of this, and it does look like a bug on our side in Search Console reporting (and FWIW it doesn’t seem to be related to AI Overviews at all, but I can see how that would be tempting). Once we know more (and ideally have fixed it), we’ll likely add an annotation in Search Console & an entry in the data anomalies page.
Google details. Google then posted an update here, confirming the reporting issue. Google wrote:
A logging error affected Search Console reporting on product snippets from May 15, 2024 until May 27, 2024. As a result, you may notice an increase in clicks and impressions during this period for the Product snippet search appearance type in the performance report and impressions overlay in the product snippet rich result report. This is just a logging issue, not an actual change in clicks or impressions.
What it looks like. Here is a screenshot showing the spike for this report:
Why we care. If you noticed this unusual spike, you were not alone. Just note that this was a reporting glitch in Google Search Console so that you know what happened.
It would be best to ignore that data, within that date range, for client and internal reporting purposes.
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.
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