NeedMyLink Fixes Bug in Google Indexing Reports
Starting September 21, NeedMyLink’s Google indexing reports showed lower-than-actual results. The service identified the issue in a third-party status checker, recalculated 326 projects, and re-indexed orders placed from September 20 free of charge.
NeedMyLink reported that starting September 21, its Google indexing reports were underreporting results. According to the service, the links themselves were indexing as usual-the bug only affected the reporting.
The service attributes the issue to a third-party status-checking vendor: following a recent Google update, the vendor started returning empty search results and flagging indexed links as unindexed. NeedMyLink states they caught the discrepancy using an in-house script that checks links the way a browser does, and confirmed it manually via the site: operator. After being contacted, the reporting vendor fixed their system.
Following a recalculation across 326 projects, the service reports that the average indexation rate jumped from 56.3% to 75.8%. All orders placed since September 20 have been resubmitted for indexing free of charge, and statuses within the platform have already been updated-users can open their older projects to verify.
Source: NeedMyLink news announcement.
What this means for our rankings: This situation proves that indexation rates depend not just on the indexing tool itself, but also on how those checks are performed. A glitch in an external checker skewed the metrics down by nearly 20 percentage points for a whole month. Over the coming year, this area is going to get shaky for everyone: Google is shutting down the Custom Search API on January 1, 2027, and services that rely on it for verification will have to scramble for alternatives. The recalculated figures come directly from the service itself and have not been independently verified by us, so the data on NeedMyLink's vendor profile remains unchanged by this news.
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