u/PGordonPBR

I run an established Blogger site on a custom domain that has been indexed normally for years, including in Google News. In late July, something changed very suddenly. Google Search Console began showing “Crawl allowed: Yes” but “Page fetch: Failed: Redirect error” on normal article URLs. At the same time, the ?m=1 versions of those same posts will sometimes index and appear in Google News. Facebook’s Sharing Debugger has also intermittently failed to generate previews and has been redirected to Google’s /sorry page with 429-style behavior. Other automated fetchers are seeing the same thing. Normal users can usually load the site fine.

The impact has been severe. Google crawl requests fell sharply from roughly 2,500/day, and Search impressions dropped from about 31,300 in one 7-day period to 1,010 in the next, while clicks fell from 459 to 35. Over the longer three-month comparison, average ranking position stayed almost exactly the same, which makes this look less like a normal ranking/quality drop and more like a crawl/indexing/access issue. Bing is still discovering and surfacing brand-new posts within an hour, including title, description, and image, while Google struggles with the canonical URL. Has anyone seen this exact combination on Blogger — redirect error on canonical URLs, ?m=1 indexing, 429/Google “sorry” behavior, and sudden crawl collapse — and if so, what actually fixed it?

In addition to the deletion of your blog, has anyone else been dealing with Blogger redirect errors in Google Search Console over the past several weeks?

My site has experienced repeated redirect errors, sitemap processing problems and indexing issues. I also saw Facebook’s crawler receive 429 responses when attempting to generate link previews.

Today, the underlying Blogspot address suddenly displayed a “Blog has been removed” message during what appears to be a widespread Blogger false-positive incident affecting many established sites.

I’m wondering whether these problems could be connected—possibly signs of a larger issue involving Blogger’s redirects, crawler access or automated security systems that has now come to a head. Last month, posts would index in Google within minutes - now, hardly would they index.

Were any of you seeing GSC redirect errors, failed indexing, sitemap errors or Facebook preview problems before your blog was removed today? Please include roughly when the problems began and whether you use a custom domain.

Wondering if there is a correlation?