Is site: a reliable method for getting full list of indexed pages?
-
The site:domain.com search seems to show less pages than it used to (Google and Bing).
It doesn't relate to a specific site but all sites. For example, I will get "page 1 of about 3,000 results" but by the time I've paged through the results it will end and change to "page 24 of 201 results". In that example If I look in GSC it shows 1,932 indexed.
Should I now accept the "pages" listed in site: is an unreliable metric?
-
Keep in mind that for a site:domain.com search, Google now includes pages from OTHER SITES that are using the canonical tag to point to your site. So, even though it says there are 300 pages indexed, 30 of those pages might be on other sites that use the canonical tag pointing to your site. The numbers of pages indexed that you're looking at may not be entirely accurate because of this.
-
I just haven't seen where the pages reduced, but I only use that operator for a general search. I have never gone through all the pages, etc. For that I would use any of the crawler tools. It would be interesting to see a download of search, GSC, and then something like Screaming Frog to see what we see.
As soon as I wrote that I checked our site and realized what you are saying. For Google we get "About 281 results," as I go to last page of results it changes to "page 13 of 126 results."
Then out of curiosity I tried Bing and now I am scratching my head: "763 results." When I go to last possible page I get, "247-256 of 256 results." I think that means my 281 results from Google are mostly on Bing!!!! (in case someone does not realize my humor, that last statement can be defined as either jest or sarcasm.)
So, when doing the site: I get 126 with Google but search console has 428...
Certainly interesting. I will keep playing with it.
Best
-
Hi Robert,
Thanks for your input.
The reason for doing it is part of an SEO site review process to examine pages indexed in Google compared to a site crawl in a tool like screaming frog and the indexed pages defined in GSC.
In terms of the "page 24 of 201 results" example, I mean that when you first use the site:domain.com Google will give you an estimated number of results, e.g. 3000 but actually as you click through the pages you find that the number of results is reduced - sometimes significantly.
-
I am not sure I understand where you say, " ...it will end and change to "page 24 of 201 results." I have used the site: operator a long time and I think it is reasonably accurate. One thing I notice is the occasional "some pages have been ... duplicate" and do you want to see those? So, if you include all of those what's the magic number?
Is there a reason you want the data that demands an exact result? I am not sure of anything that would give you that. The question is "indexed" within the given search engine. If you crawl with screaming frog, etc. you may see pages that are not indexed, so the comparison is not apples to apples. Just curious as to what you are wanting to know exact indexed pages for?
Interesting question.
-
Typically, the site: command in Google is unreliable. There are lots of reasons why, one being that there may be pages indexed that aren't "good enough", for whatever reason, to show up in the search results. When we look at the site pages indexed, we typically will use the site: command, then click a few pages deep and look at the number it shows (not the first number of pages it shows).
For SEO auditing purposes, we're looking to see if there is a significant difference between the number of pages indexed and the number of pages that we find when we we crawl the website ourselves.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Getting 'Indexed, not submitted in sitemap' for around a third of my site. But these pages ARE in the sitemap we submitted.
As in the title, we have a site with around 40k pages, but around a third of them are showing as "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap" in Google Search Console. We've double-checked the sitemaps we have submitted and the URLs are definitely in the sitemap. Any idea why this might be happening? Example URL with the error: https://www.teacherstoyourhome.co.uk/german-tutor/Egham Sitemap it is located on: https://www.teacherstoyourhome.co.uk/sitemap-subject-locations-surrey.xml
Technical SEO | | TTYH0 -
What is the best way to show content in Listing Pages?
If it is e-commerce site and a product listing page there is always a conflict how to show the content? As per my understanding we can show content in two different ways. 1. To show little content and use **Read more. (**In this case there is a direct message to the google: Here is the content visible and rest content is hidden but available for visitors to read more 2. Can use** Scroll bar**. So here is the message to Google and visitors that my full content is available here. So just scroll down to read further. So I want to know that which method of showing content is best and it's impact of SEO where there is UI constraint or both the method is ok without any SEO impact. Please share your suggestions. DCdRJpH
Technical SEO | | kathiravan0 -
301'd site, but new site is not getting picked up in google.
Hi I'm having big issues! Any help would be greatly appreciated This is the 3rd time this happened. Every time I switch my old site greatcleanjokes.com to the new design of chokeonajoke.com traffic goes almost completely down (I even tried out the new design on greatcleanjokes [to see if it was a 301 issue] and traffic also went down.) What can possibly be wrong with this new site that google just doesn't like it ?! I was ranking high up for many big phrase like joke of the day, corny jokes, clean jokes, short jokes. Now It's all gone. I also think it's strange that when I search for site:chokeonajoke.com the post pages show up before the category pages!? Here is the old site http://web.archive.org/web/20140406214615/http://www.greatcleanjokes.com/ Here is the new one http://chokeonajoke.com/ If you can't figure out anything do you know of anyone I can hire who may be able to figure it out?
Technical SEO | | Nickys22111 -
Should I ask third pages to erase their links pointing at my site?
Good Morning Seomoz Fans, let me explain what is going on: A surfing site has included a link to my Site in their Footer. apparently, this could be good for my site, but as It has nothing to do with my site, I ask myself if I should tell them to erase it. Site A (Surfing Site) is pointing at Site B (Marketing Site) on their Footer. So Site B is receiving backlinks from every single page on Site A. But Site B has nothing to do with Site A: Different Markets. Should I ask them to erase the link on their footer as Surfing people will not find my Marketing Site interesting? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
How to block "print" pages from indexing
I have a fairly large FAQ section and every article has a "print" button. Unfortunately, this is creating a page for every article which is muddying up the index - especially on my own site using Google Custom Search. Can you recommend a way to block this from happening? Example Article: http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/idx.php/11/183/Maintenance-of-Mature-Locks-6-months-/article/How-do-I-get-sand-out-of-my-dreads.html Example "Print" page: http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/article.php?id=052&action=print
Technical SEO | | dreadmichael0 -
How to get user genreated reviews indexed properly?
We are currently working to improve the deployment of a review widget on our website. The widget was deployed about 18 months ago and all reviews are behind Java navigation. I have been working with our IT staff to get the reviews into an HTML page which will either live on the product page as a tab or will be a link from the product page. Our IT staff has suggested leaving the Java navigation for users and creating separate HTML pages specifically for search engines. Based on my experience, this sounds like a bad idea, basically creating pages just for search engines that will not be use by site visitors, although the visitors will have access to the same content via the Java navigation. Anyone care to comment on this? Is creating HTML pages specifically for search engines a bad idea? An acceptable idea?
Technical SEO | | seorunner0 -
Getting a citation page indexed
Howdy mozzers, I have a citation on a .govt domain with 2 links pointing to my site. The page is not indexed by Google, bing or yahoo. URL; http://www.familyservices.govt.nz/directory/viewprovider.htm?id=17077 I have tried getting the paged indexed by building bookmark links to it. I have tweeted the url and gotten a few re-tweets for it. But no luck. The page has got no nofollow meta tag. Other listings have been indexed by google. Could someone please advise on means to help me get the page indexed? A strategy that I have not yet tried is submitting a sitemap that includes the external url as I am not sure if it is possible to include url's not part of my domain. Any advice, help would be greatly appreciated. viva le SEOmoz Thanks
Technical SEO | | ihms1 -
Site not being Indexed that fast anymore, Is something wrong with this Robots.txt
My wordpress site's robots.txt used to be this: User-agent: * Disallow: Sitemap: http://www.domainame.com/sitemap.xml.gz I also have all in one SEO installed and other than posts, tags are also index,follow on my site. My new posts used to appear on google in seconds after publishing. I changed the robots.txt to following and now post indexing takes hours. Is there something wrong with this robots.txt? User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin Disallow: /wp-admin Disallow: /wp-includes Disallow: /wp-content/plugins Disallow: /wp-content/cache Disallow: /wp-content/themes Disallow: /wp-login.php Disallow: /wp-login.php Disallow: /trackback Disallow: /feed Disallow: /comments Disallow: /author Disallow: /category Disallow: */trackback Disallow: */feed Disallow: */comments Disallow: /login/ Disallow: /wget/ Disallow: /httpd/ Disallow: /*.php$ Disallow: /? Disallow: /*.js$ Disallow: /*.inc$ Disallow: /*.css$ Disallow: /*.gz$ Disallow: /*.wmv$ Disallow: /*.cgi$ Disallow: /*.xhtml$ Disallow: /? Disallow: /*?Allow: /wp-content/uploads User-agent: TechnoratiBot/8.1 Disallow: ia_archiverUser-agent: ia_archiver Disallow: / disable duggmirror User-agent: duggmirror Disallow: / allow google image bot to search all imagesUser-agent: Googlebot-Image Disallow: /wp-includes/ Allow: /* # allow adsense bot on entire siteUser-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Disallow: Allow: /* Sitemap: http://www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml.gz
Technical SEO | | ideas1230