Some users of Google Search Console have been receiving “Hostload Exceeded” errors when using the Search Console URL Inspection tool. In this blog, we’re taking a look at what this means, and what Google is saying about it.
Over the weekend, many users have experienced Google Search Console failing to index their webpages, alongside the cryptic error “Hostload Exceeded” message when looking up the URL in the URL inspector tool in Search Console.
Was the issue caused by web hosting companies?
Websites hosted on Namecheap, DRWebhost and Hostinger all reported indexing issues over the weekend. While the hosting companies investigated this and claimed to have fixed the issue, some users were still getting the error in Google Search Console. So, this is when everyone took to Google, as it began to appear to be an issue with Google instead of web hosts.
What does Google say about this error?
After users worked out Google was responsible for this issue, Google’s support pages were swarmed with reports from different users who were experiencing this issue.
John Mueller from the Google Search Relations team jumped onto X (formerly Twitter) to say:
“I wouldn’t worry about it – normal crawling and indexing is generally fine.”.
The general issue with Google Search Console was that people were spamming the inspect URL tool, which became overloaded. The only solution to this was tweeted by Mueller, who suggested simply not using the Inspect URL tool to request indexing as crawling and indexing happens naturally, and you don’t need to force Google to crawl a specific page.
If you want to grow your business’ presence online, be sure to speak to our expert team at Engage Web today, who will be happy to help you out.
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