Google has recently acknowledged and addressed the “Hostload Exceeded” issue with indexing, which has been affecting some users of Google Search Console. The issue occurs when users try to use the “Request Indexing” feature within the URL Inspection Tool.
Google has seen a spike in the “hostload exceeded” error in Search Console, which is preventing some users from requesting indexing of their web pages. The issue seems to be caused by abuse of the “request indexing” feature by spammers.
Google’s John Mueller confirmed the issue on Twitter, saying that He also advised users to avoid using the “request indexing” feature if they see the error.
Google has explained that the issue is caused by abuse by spammers overloading the Request Indexing feature. The company has also clarified that the issue does not affect normal crawling and indexing and that users do not need to request indexing manually to index their content.
Google has stated that the “hostload exceeded” error does not affect a website’s indexed status or its traffic. However, it can prevent new pages from being indexed quickly.
The “hostload exceeded” error occurs when a website’s server is overloaded with requests from Googlebot. This can happen if a website is very popular or if it is being crawled by Googlebot more often than usual.
Google is working on a fix for the issue, but in the meantime, users are advised to avoid using the “request indexing” feature. If you need to request indexing of a specific web page, you can use Google Search Console’s “URL Inspection” tool and then click on the “Request Indexing” button. However, if you see the “hostload exceeded” error, you should avoid requesting indexing of the page again.
What to do if you see the “hostload exceeded” error
If you see the “hostload exceeded” error, there are a few things you can do:
- Avoid using the “request indexing” feature in Google Search Console unless you need to index a specific URL immediately.
- If you have a lot of new pages to index, you can submit an XML sitemap to Google. This will help Googlebot to discover and index your new pages more quickly.
- You can also try to reduce the load on your server by using a content delivery network (CDN) or by optimizing your images.
Hostload Exceeded Issue Not A Web Host Issue
Yes, that is correct. The “hostload exceeded” issue is not a web host issue. It is an issue with Google’s crawling and indexing system. When Google sees that a website is overloaded with requests from Googlebot, it may reduce or stop crawling the website until the load decreases. This is to protect Google’s servers and to ensure that it can crawl and index all websites fairly.
Twitter Discussion
Google’s John Mueller entered the discussion and shared his opinion on what was happening.
Thank you for looking into this.
I have contacted them and asked if there are any changes related to it, as per their words they haven’t changed anything.
Is there any specific question/problem I should point to them, please? As they don’t see any issues.
— Aleksandras (@alkorotkovas) October 20, 2023
I know I’m not the only one getting ‘Hostload exceeded’ errors after searching on here.
I’m not on hostinger, there’s enough disc space; what’s going on please @searchliaison @JohnMu?— Nat (@__nca) October 22, 2023
John Mueller’s answer suggests that users who are experiencing hostload exceeded problems are submitting too many URLs to Google. Mueller also asked a user who was seeing the issue when they were seeing it.