Site: Query Question
-
Hi All,
Question around the site: query you can execute on Google for example. Now I know it has lots of inaccuracies, but I like to keep a high level sight of it over time.
I was using it to also try and get a high level view of how many product pages were indexed vs. the total number of pages.
What is interesting is when I do a site: query for say www.newark.com I get ~748,000 results returned.
When I do a query for www.newark.com "/dp/" I get ~845,000 results returned.
Either I am doing something stupid or these numbers are completely backwards?
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Ben
-
Barry Schwartz posted some great information about this in November of 2010, quoting a couple of different Google sources. In short, more specific queries can cause Google to dig deeper and give more accurate estimates.
-
Yup. get rid of parameter laden urls and its easy enough. If they hang around the index for a few months before disappearing thats no big deal, as long as you have done the right thing it will work out fine
Also your not interested in the chaff, just the bits you want to make sure are indexed. So make sure thise are in sensibly titled sitemaps and its fine (used this on sites with 50 million and 100 million product pages. It gets a bit more complex at that number, but the underlying principle is the same)
-
But then on a big site (talking 4m+ products) its usually the case that you have URL's indexed that wouldn't be generated in a sitemap because they include additional parameters.
Ideally of course you rid the index of parameter filled URL's but its pretty tough to do that.
-
Best bet is to make sure all your urls are in your sitemap and then you get an exact count.
Ive found it handy to use multiple sitempas for each subfolder i.e. /news/ or /profiles/ to be able to quickly see exactly what % of urls are indexed from each section of my site. This is super helpful in finding errors in a specific section or when you are working on indexing of a certain type of page
S
-
What I've found the reason for this comes down to how the Google system works. Case in point, a client site I have with 25,000 actual pages. They have mass duplicate content issues. When I do a generic site: with the domain, Google shows 50-60,000 pages. If I do an inurl: with a specific URL param, I either get 500,000 or over a million.
Though that's not your exact situation, it can help explain what's happening.
Essentially, if you do a normal site: Google will try its best to provide the content within the site that it shows the world based on "most relevant" content. When you do a refined check, it's naturally going to look for the content that really is most relevant - closest match to that actual parameter.
So if you're seeing more results with the refined process, it means that on any given day, at any given time, when someone does a general search, the Google system will filter out a lot of content that isn't seen as highly valuable for that particular search. So all those extra pages that come up in your refined check - many of them are most likely then evaluated as less than highly valuable / high quality or relevant to most searches.
Even if many are great pages, their system has multiple algorithms that have to be run to assign value. What you are seeing is those processes struggling to sort it all out.
-
about 839,000 results.
-
Different data center perhaps - what about if you add in the "dp" query to the string?
-
I actually see 'about 897,000 results' for the search 'site:www.newark.com'.
-
Thanks Adrian,
I understand those areas of inaccuracy, but I didn't expect to see a refined search produce more results than the original search. That just seems a little bizarre to me, which is why I was wondering if there was a clear explanation or if I was executing my query incorrectly.
Ben
-
This is an expected 'oddity' of the site: operator. Here is a video of Matt Cutts explaining the imprecise nature of the site: operator.
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
-
Link Activity to site keeps decreasing
Recently I have started seeing daily declines in the total inbound links to my site. 4 of my top 5 sources are all experiencing pretty significant declines and in fact, Pinterest has declined from a high of 16,295 links in Nov '15 to a current number that is 8,479 on 1/6/16. Any ideas on what could be causing these declines? I did upload a new sitemap in Nov, could this be the cause?
Reporting & Analytics | | ctripp10100 -
Https question
I had a site with an ssl certificate on. It has now been taken off. We are getting 404 errors on the weekly report for pages that were indexed as https What is the best way to get rid of these? How can I take them off the map or do we need to put the ssl back on? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | sharpster0 -
Analiytics question
Hello guys, We are currently getting in our website around 600 daily visitors.
Reporting & Analytics | | WayneRooney
We getting around the 50 quotes a day.
Can i know trough Analytics from where all the visitors that click the quote button coming from ? Thank you0 -
Homepage on page 2 for site:domain
Hi all, today I noticed that our homepage is located on page 2 if you do the site:domain query. As far as I know, the site:domain results mirror the importance in the eyes of Google. Some time ago, our homepage was the first result. I have to say that we do not often have changing elements or new content on the homepage, it is more like a static page. But still the most linked to page on the domain... What conclusion can I come to? Is our homepage of lower importance to Google than some time ago? Is it a problem for SEO? As we backed down our advertisments, the traffic from branded keywords fell the last months - could this be an explanation? And, most important: do I have to worry? (Besides, the SEO-traffic is fine and growing..)
Reporting & Analytics | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Google Analytics Queries
Hi we used a web company who put our analytics under their company name we have left them and set up a new tracking code not associated with them, but we still have access to the data and it is all contained under the same login, is it possible to merge the two tracking codes? so that we have seemless history. Also does anyone know if you can change the primary e-mail address (gmail account) to a corporate email account? Any help would be appreciated as we have researched both and from what we have found we can't merge the data and also we are stuck with the primary email address.
Reporting & Analytics | | loopylu030 -
When I look at my SEOMOZ campaigns I see there are a lot of warnings in regards to missing Meta Tags Descriptions but they exist on a clien'ts wordpress site
when I look at my SEOMOZ campaigns I see there are a lot of warnings in regards to missing Meta Tags Descriptions but they exist on a clien'ts wordpress site
Reporting & Analytics | | Doug_Hay1 -
Is the link data from Open Site Explorer in real time or an average?
I just started using Open Site Explorer to track internal and external link data. Is this information given in real time or is it an average over a specified period of time?
Reporting & Analytics | | mequoda0 -
Human Representation on a site
Hello Friends, thank you for helping in advance. My website http://www.FrontlineMobility.com gets a lot of traffic and with our Google Adwords campaigns we have very good click through rates(percentages from 1 percent to 4 percent). So I know that I am getting people to my site, but I can't get them to spend money. It seems like they get there ready to buy, but something turns them away at the last moment. My Partner feels like we should put more pictures of people on the site so that people feel like there is a face to our company. I am also in agreement with this, but I would also like to know if anything else is wrong with our site that perhaps maybe another set of eyes could perceive. Thank you again Moz friends. Justin Smith Frontline Mobility
Reporting & Analytics | | FrontlineMobility0