Google's Index Page Counts Like a "Rollercoaster"?
A WebmasterWorld thread has dozens of reports that Google's page index counts of sites have been bouncing up and down like a rollercoaster.
By page index site, I assume they mean the number of pages Google reports when you conduct a site:www.seroundtable.com (aka a site command) search on a domain. I personally do not follow the indexed page counts, since I know those numbers are very rounded and considered estimates but huge increases and decreases may represent something about a site.
However, huge increases that happen over and over again over short periods of time may be just be whacky data from Google.
So which is it? Is Google whacky? Is Google stricter some days on what they should index? Is it simply new data centers messing with webmasters? Is it just something SEOs obsess over for no reason? Is there an issue with these guys sites?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
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rustybrick in Google Optimization at October 2, 2007 8:08 AM
Comments (1)
Comments
For small sites the index page count numbers are usually very accurate. A lot of high profile SEOs have been beating up on Google's index page counts needlessly, probably spurred on by remarks Matt Cutts made last year and which many people have taken out of context.
When Google is reporting fewer than 1000 indexed pages for a small site, you can usually find out how many pages it really has indexed.
When Google is reporting more than 1000 indexed pages for a medium-sized site, you can still get a pretty good idea of how many pages are indexed by looking at sub-directories on the site.
The numbers do tend to fluctuate when Google is making substantial changes.
Posted by Michael Martinez at October 2, 2007 11:59