Debug Log #9: The Second Burst Didn't Repeat. Here's the Null Result.
Fourteen days. That's how long it's been since the last search impression landed, following the three-day burst I wrote about in Debug Log #8 and explicitly declined to call a trend. Here's the follow-through on that caution, with the data that answers it.
The answer to the open question
Debug Log #8 ended with: "I'd want to see this repeat, or ideally accelerate, over the next couple of weeks before treating the indexing requests as the explanation rather than a coincidence." It's been close to two weeks. It didn't repeat. It didn't accelerate. Zero impressions, every single day, from October 1st through at least October 11th (Search Console's reporting lag means anything more recent isn't visible yet, but two full weeks of silence is enough to answer the question that was actually asked).
So what was the September 28-30 burst?
I don't know, and saying so plainly is the point of this post. It could have been residual effect from the indexing requests that didn't sustain. It could have been unrelated crawl timing that happened to land in the same window. Three data points were never enough to distinguish between those explanations, and seventeen days of silence afterward doesn't distinguish between them either -- it just rules out the version where indexing requests created lasting, compounding visibility. They didn't. Whatever caused those three days, it was a blip, not a turning point.
Where this leaves the indexing-request experiment
The 17 requests from three weeks ago are still technically "pending" in the sense that Google never promises a timeline, but at this point I'm treating that experiment as concluded with a null result: submitting the requests was still the correct move given 17 pages weren't indexed at all, but it did not produce a sustained increase in search visibility. That's a less satisfying ending than the one implied by Debug Log #8's cautious optimism, and it's the more honest one.
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