Several discussions on Google support forums highlight a potential glitch in Google’s algorithm that leads certain generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to vanish entirely from the search engine results pages (SERPs). Numerous publishers with similar gTLDs are experiencing the same issue, referred to as the Google Weekend Ranking Bug.
What unites them is the shared type of domain name, resulting in a complete absence from Google’s SERPs during the weekend, with some unable to achieve any ranking, even for their own site names.
Olesia Korobka (@Giridja) brought attention to this problem through a tweet:
Is This a Recurring Problem? One might reasonably assume that a decline in traffic over the weekend is a typical occurrence. However, the issue extends beyond mere traffic reduction; it involves a substantial drop in rankings, including the website’s name. It gives the impression of a complete de-indexing every weekend, particularly affecting specific types of generic top-level domains. Hence, this is not a routine weekend traffic fluctuation.
Google Weekend Ranking Bug
The individual who raised the support question on Google compiled a list of 14 URLs from other support threads related to gTLDs encountering similar issues. Notably, 9 out of the 14, constituting 64%, were from January 2024, with the earliest one dated 11/24/2023.
While it cannot be assumed that this list is exhaustive, it is noteworthy that there are numerous threads from the current year all exhibiting the peculiar pattern of weekend de-indexing. Moreover, this anomaly is specifically affecting certain keyword gTLDs.
An Example of Reports on Ranking Anomalies
From 1/3/2024, A publisher with a .consulting gTLD wrote:
“Our company website seems to be disappearing from Google search engine results every couple of days, resulting in a significant loss of traffic. None of our web pages are showing up on Google during these periods, and we’re struggling to understand the root cause of this recurrent issue.”
Since the end of December, a different publisher using a .club gTLD posted a screenshot from their Search Console, revealing a comparable cycle of crashes and ranking fluctuations.
From 12/15/2023:
“Traffic drops every weekend
Since 2 weeks our traffic started dropping down every weekend.
It’s not so much the drop – less traffic on the weekend is normal. It’s the context that is very strage: we noticed that pages from our site don’t show up for keywords they normally rank for very well. This includes our brand name; the site disappears from the SERPs around Friday and is back on Sunday/Monday.”
From January 5, 2024:
“My site loses its position on the Google results page several days on a week!
After November 22, 2023 this site: (redacted for privacy) lost it’s position on SERP for few days and came back to normal on November 22! This happened on December 7 and back to normal on December 11 again(!) and repeated 4 more time until now!
During this, I checked all probabilities like: There is no issues on manual actions and security issues report. There is no critical issues on any report on GSC.
Also in URL Inspection (Google index and live test) report, (redacted for privacy) is on Google and also available to Google. This site was performing good about 2 years before this problem and reached 60k click on 28 days!
Notice that when this problem happened, “sitemap read” list is get empty but I’m not sure this is the issue or not!”
Starting on January 5, 2024, a publisher utilizing a .care gTLD, facing the same issue, contributed to a support thread addressing this concern:
“100% same problem – also other German and international cases.
As you said: experts are ignoring the fact of the site’s periodic return to its previous positions and that sites of no better quality replace the site that dropped out.”
There’s another one from January 8, 2024 that is on the .life gTLD:
“Randomly daily index/deindex our site + impact on Business profile
Hello,
From end of November we experience strange result in our Performances report, it’s not a seasonal drop.
We don’t have any issue in Manual actions nor in Security issues indexing looks normal.”
Why Are Websites Disappearing During Weekends?
There’s a longstanding issue that traces back to the early days of Google, wherein a domain would become trapped in a ranking loop, experiencing de-indexing for a month, followed by a brief return for a week, only to vanish again—failing even to rank for its own domain name. I initially observed this phenomenon around 2003 or 2004, and its root cause was often traced to a domain’s history of spam, with the status persisting inexplicably. Google didn’t acknowledge this problem until two decades later.
In reference to the Legacy Domain Penalty, Google’s John Mueller made the following comment:
“The other thing that I’ve very, very rarely seen, is that a site gets stuck in some kind of a weird in-between state in our systems in that…
…at some point our algorithms reviewed the website and found it to be absolutely terrible and uh for whatever reason those parts of the algorithms just took a very long time to be updated again.”
While there’s a resemblance between the gTLD rank and crash pattern and the legacy domain penalty, I am inclined to believe that they are likely distinct issues.
The weekend rank crashing for gTLDs seems primarily tied to keyword gTLD domains and does not seem to be linked to historical spam issues. It does not align with a quality issue since Google does not typically respond to quality issues in this fashion.
The problem seems to point towards a potential bug in Google’s systems, possibly arising from a recent introduction to their algorithms around the end of November, which is now manifesting unintended effects.
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