The Google Indexing Purge Update
A new study from Indexing Insight to understand the largest content removal event by Google in May 2025.
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At Indexing Insight, we noticed a HUGE number of pages being actively removed from Google's search results at the end of May 2025.
This indexing purge was so large it caused many SEO professionals to notice that entire websites were being actively removed from Google's search index.
However, the current understanding of this purge is incomplete.
In this newsletter, I'll explain what really happened during the May 2025 index purge and why Google's official explanation doesn't tell the whole story.
I'll show evidence that this wasn't just "normal fluctuation" but one of the largest content purge we've ever tracked.
So, let's dive in.
Search Index Update Findings
I’ve broken down the findings and analysis into 5 parts:
Google indexing purge
25% of monitored pages were actively removed
Google broke the 130-Day Indexing rule
15% - 75% of indexed pages removed
Why Google removed the pages
🔥 Google indexing purge
At the end of May 2025, we noticed a massive increase in the number of pages that were being actively removed by Google’s Search index.
I raised that Google had made a MASSIVE update to its search index on LinkedIn.
The reaction to the quick post on LinkedIn, and on Twitter, was massive.
Many people reached out to me and provided screenshots of their Page Indexing report in Google Search Console.
This story, and screenshots, were also picked up by Barry Schwartz on SEORoundtable.
Whatever Google did at the end of May 2025 it had a huge impact on a large portion of its index. And caused many websites to have their indexed pages to be removed from Google’s index.
But why were these pages removed? And is this different to any other Google core update?
I dug into the Indexing Insight data to find out.
🕷️ 25% of monitored pages were actively removed
Since May 26th 2025 over 25% of monitored URLs have the indexing state ‘crawled - previously indexed’.
When an indexed page is actively removed from Google’s Search results the indexing state changes from ‘submitted and indexed’ to ‘crawled - currently not indexed’.
Since monitoring back in early 2024 we have not seen this level of active removal by Google across SO many websites.
Note: At Indexing Insight we noticed this pattern over a year ago and we created a new report ‘crawled - previously indexed’.
This new report helps our customers to identify exactly which pages are being actively removed from Google’s search results. And it’s this data that can be aggregated together and be shown over the last 90 days.
♻️ Google broke the 130-Day Indexing Rule
Google recrawled URLs in the last 90-130 days and then actively deindexed pages.
Previously, we (and others) have identified the 130-day indexing rule. The rule is simple: After 130 days of not being crawled a page is actively removed from Google’s search results (going from indexed to not indexed).
However, starting from May 26th this pattern reversed and it seems Google actively removed pages it had recrawled in 90-130 days.
In fact, comparing the days since last crawl time buckets before and after May 25 reveals that Not Indexed pages doubled or tripled.
What does this mean?
It means that Google didn’t wait the usual 130 days since last crawl to collect signals around these pages.
Instead, Google crawled or recrawled pages over the last 3 months and decided not to wait to deindex pages.
This can be seen in Google Search Console > Crawl Stats report.
From the accounts we have access to that saw 50-75% pages deindexed we can see in Crawl Stat reports that Googlebot crawling spike between March…
…and early May 2025.
Note: The spikes in crawling might be nothing to do with the indexing purge. As we’ve seen at Indexing Insight that crawling and deindexing aren’t always connected.
In fact the longer it takes for a live page to be crawled the greater the chance a page will be deindexed.
We don’t know if this 90-day indexing rule is here to stay or if this is just a one-off by Google to purge its index of low-quality content.
Here are some of my theories:
Threshold update - A test they are running to see the impact of tweaking the quality thresholds in its index to remove low-quality pages faster from search results.
Seasonal update - Google does “deindex” pages due to seasonal demands and they might be archiving indexed pages to make room for other more important pages.
Core update - Google may be getting ready to run a BIG core update and the index is just reacting to the new mini algorithms.
Your guess is as good as mine. But one thing we know is that something changed.
🤯 15% - 75% of Indexed Pages Removed
At Indexing Insight, we have a unique report called ‘crawled - previously indexed’.
This unique report tells us exactly which indexed pages have been actively deindexed by Google. This allows us to see exactly the impact of the May/June 2025 update.
In May-25 we’ve seen websites get 15% - 75% of monitored pages moved into the ‘crawled - previously indexed’ report.
The interesting thing about monitoring different websites is the variation in data.
What was interesting about this update was that not all websites saw such a huge spike in indexed pages being actively removed from the index.
Although they saw an increase in ‘crawled - previously indexed’ this was still only 1% - 3% of all monitored pages.
What is interesting is that not all websites seem to impacted by this May-25 index update. Some were impacted more than others…
…they question is what is causing these pages to be deindexed?
That’s what I found out in the final part of this article.
0️⃣ Why Pages Have Been Deindexed
The reason pages are being actively removed is because of a lack of user engagement.
After analysing both the Search Analytics data we have access to AND reviewing the types of pages being actively removed, the pattern is clear.
Google actively purged a lot of “poor performing” pages from its index in May 2025.
There are two key reasons why this trend is clear when you review the data:
Zero or low-engagement pages
Zero impact on SEO performance
Zero or low-engagement pages
When reviewing the pages that we have Search Analytics data we noticed the same pattern: Pages actively deindexed by Google had low or zero SEO performance.
Let me show you some examples.
When checking the SEO performance of pages for atmlocation.pro you can see that the page did appear in Google Search. But barely had any clicks or impressions over the last 12 months.
For another publishing website, you can see that the page had a large spike in engagement and then nothing.
Finally, blog articles from a website with a lack of SEO performance (clicks and impressions) were actively deindexed by Google.
The same pattern is seen over and over again when reviewing pages that were actively deindexed in Google’s Search index.
Pages that had poor performance in Googe Search were actively purged.
Zero impact on SEO performance
The indexing purge had zero impact on the SEO performance of websites.
As you can see from the screenshot below, the removal of indexed pages has had zero impact on SEO clicks or impressions after late May-25 or early June-25.
This didn’t just happen to 1 website but other websites we had access to saw either no decline or a positive trend in clicks and impressions.
The screenshot below is of a website that had 75% of its important pages actively removed by Google’ Search index. However, it still saw a positive improvement in clicks and impressions during the June core update.
This further shows that Google actively removed a TONNE of inactive documents from its search index.
If thousands of pages get actively deindexed and it has zero impact on impressions or clicks…were those pages of use anyway?
Summary
Something happened in Google’s Search index at the end of May 2025.
And based on the reaction from the SEO community and website owners, the great purge impacted A LOT of websites. Of all shapes and sizes.
John Mueller, a Webmaster Trend Analyst at Google, replied to the comments of website owners on Bluesky (source) who saw massive drops in the number of indexed pages at the end of May-25:
“Thanks, everyone, for the sample URLs - very helpful. Based on these, I don't see a technical issue on our (or on any of the sites) side. Our systems make adjustments in what's crawled & indexed regularly. That's normal and expected. This is visible in any mid-sized+ website - you will see the graphs for indexing fluctuate over time. Sometimes the changes are smaller, bigger, up, or down. Our crawl budget docs talk about crawl capacity & crawl demand, they also play a role in indexing.” - John Mueller
The key thing to highlight here is that John mentioned that there was no “technical issues” on Google’s side. And there is a link between capacity/demand in indexing.
This lines up with what we’ve been seeing at Indexing Insight. However, we have NEVER seen such a large number of documents actively removed from Google’s index.
Our own customer data showed that 15-75% of indexed pages were actively deindexed by Google. These weren’t just small websites or brands. They were big, medium and small brands.
The common factor in why so many pages were deindexed?
Based on the available data, the most likely explanation was that Google purged a HUGE number of documents that didn’t drive any meaningful engagement (clicks, queries, swipes, impressions, etc.) from its search index.
This lines up with how Google’s Search Index works (based on Google patents).
The problem is that based on the data, Google’s index didn’t wait around the usual 1 - 130 days. Instead, the index seemed to purge content within days of being recrawled.
Why?
No idea. But we can make an educated guess. Here are a few ideas:
Seasonal search demand: Google needed to make more room within its index for a growing demand for more content within a topic/niche.
Core update: Google made updates to its system to get ready for its core update (which happened in June 2025), and the quality threshold increased which caused inactive pages which did not meet this threshold to be deindexed.
Quality threshold update: Google updated its quality threshold, based on stored signals in the index, which means moving forward it will get harder to get pages indexed.
These are all just ideas. And they might all be right…but also all be completely wrong.
Whatever happened in May-25 it’s clear to those who are tracking Google indexing that SOMETHING happened. And those pages that were removed from the index had zero engagement or value to Google.
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