I was having a i-chat conversation with the famous DigitalPoint (Shawn Hogan) and we were discussing how we check the number of pages we have listed in Google for a specific site. We both use the allinurl:www.domain.com site:www.domain.com command. However, most people use the site:www.domain.com www.domain.com command or the new popular site:www.domain.com com command. As you can see, all return slightly different results - however the site:www.domain.com www.domain.com and the allinurl:www.domain.com site:www.domain.com are very similar.
In regards to DigitalPoint's and my conversation, we noted how the allinurl command tends to rank the pages in some order of importance. It might be a PageRank ranking, so I put together the listings of three major sites and the backlinks for those URLs. You will see they seem like popular pages and most have a high number of backlinks. I listed out the URL followed by the number of backlinks.
First up is Apple:
www.apple.com 86,100
www.apple.com/quicktime/ 45,900
www.apple.com/quicktime/download 74,100
ww.apple.com/itunes/ 13,700
www.apple.com/macosx/ 15,500
www.apple.com/safari/ 4,980
www.apple.com/support/ 10,900
www.apple.com/ipod/ 2,280
www.apple.com/powermac/ 1,540
www.apple.com/store/ 42,400
Now for Google:
www.google.com 302,000
www.google.com/addurl.html 1,100
www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en 3,030
www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html 1,860
www.google.com/linux 610
www.google.com/ads/ 161,000
www.google.com/apis/ 1,160
www.google.com/about.html 161,000
www.google.com/help/features.html 974
www.google.com/help/ 2,160
Last but not least, CNN:
www.cnn.com 96,600
www.cnn.com/WEATHER/ 38,000
www.cnn.com/WORLD/ 36,900
www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ 33,300
www.cnn.com/SEARCH/ 11,500
www.cnn.com/video/ 36,600
www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/ 248
www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/ 694
www.cnn.com/videoselect/ 9,320
www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/ 1,590
You see the allinurl:www.domain.com site:www.domain.com gives a fair representation of the pages indexed plus orders them in a logical format.