Is Google Webmaster Tools Index Status Completely Correct?
-
So I was thrilled when Webmaster tools released the little graph telling you how many pages are indexed. However, I noticed with one of my sites, that it was actually going down over the past year. I've only been doing the SEO on the site for a few months, so it wasn't anything I did.
The chart is attached to this post.
Now here's the funny part. I haven't really noticed anything out of the ordinary for keyword ranking dropping off. I also tested my most recent page that I put up. 3 days after I posted it, I could find it in a Google search. Shouldn't this mean that's it's indexed? I can also find any other page I've posted in the last few months.
Another oddity is that I submitted a sitemap a while ago when the site was only 22 pages. The sitemap index count says 20 of those pages are indexed.
The chart only says that there are 3 indexed pages right now. However, I can clearly find dozens of pages in Google searches. Is there something I'm missing? Is my chart for this website broken? Should I report this to Google? Has anyone had a similar issue?
-
Thanks for letting me know that I'm not the only one seeing this. In Analytics, I've got a nice upward line of traffic, so as you said, I'm not too worried about it. Maybe someone else will have more knowledge about the graph itself.
-
Hey Andrew,
Yeah, I've seen the same kinds of issues where that seems to be somewhat inexact. So far, I've not been able to find an explanation. In terms of the large drop off, I did see a similar drop off on one of my sites shortly after correcting a duplicate content issue.
However, like you said, you need to watch for things out of the ordinary. For now, I'm not worrying too much about the graph. It is interesting, but I'll pay more attention to the graph in Google Analytics telling me how much traffic I have from Google. If I see a large drop there, then I'll worry.
Matthew
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
-
Google Analytics - Average Position
Hi Just trying to get some clarity on Google Analytics Average Positions in "Aquistions/Search Engine Optimisation". For a very competitive keyword Google Analytics is saying i am on average position of 6. Is this Page 6? I am assuming position six would be 1.6?
Reporting & Analytics | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Rel=Canonical vs. No Index
Ok, this is a long winded one. We're going to spell out what we've seen, then give a few questions to answer below, so please bear with us! We have websites with products listed on them and are looking for guidance on whether to use rel=canonical or some version of No Index for our filtered product listing pages. We work with a couple different website providers and have seen both strategies used. Right now, one of our web providers uses No Index, No Follow tags and Moz alerted us to the high frequency of these tags. We want to make sure our internal linking structure is sound and we are worried that blocking these filtered pages is keeping our product pages from being as relevant as they could be. We've seen recommendations to use No Index, Follow tags instead, but our other web provider uses a different method altogether. Another vendor uses a rel=canonical strategy which we've also seen when researching Nike and Amazon's sites. Because these are industry leading sites, we're wondering if we should get rid of the No Index tags completely and switch to the canonical strategy for our internal links. On that same provider's sites, we've found rel=canonical tags used after the first page of our product listings, and we've seen recommendations to use rel=prev and rel=next instead. With all that being said, we have three questions: 1)Which strategy (rel=canonical vs. No Index) do you recommend as being optimal for website crawlers and boosting our site relevance? 2)If we should be using some version of No Index, should we use Follow or No Follow? 2)Depending on the product, we have multiple pages of products for each category. Should we use rel=prev & rel=next instead of rel=canonical among the pages after page one? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Leithmarketing0 -
Google analytics Goals and Funnels??
Hey - how's things? I've got 2 goals setup, each of which use the same thank you page but with different required funnels. The results have been identical for the last few weeks - which tells me I've got something wrong!! The first goal has a contact form on every page in the /products/ directory set up like this:
Reporting & Analytics | | agua
destination equal to: /thanks-enquiry/funnel step1 page: ^/products/.* required: yes The first goal has a form on 1 page called /on-sale set up like this:
destination equal to: /thanks-enquiry/
funnel step1 page: /on-sale required: yes Any ideas?0 -
Google Direct Traffic Reporting for Mobile on Analytics
We noticed a significant drop in our direct traffic in Google Analytics for mobile on July 30th but all our other traffic remains the same. What is the possible cause of this?
Reporting & Analytics | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Google Analytics question
Hi, I recently relaunched my site on a wordpress CMS. The relaunch has gone well except for a category of traffic within Google Analytics which is referral traffic from google.co.uk (its a UK site) which has dropped off hugely. The non-paid search traffic from google.co.uk is the same or better than it was. Can anyone tell me what the difference is between referral traffic from google.co.uk and non-paid search traffic from google.co.uk. Thanks for your help. Ben
Reporting & Analytics | | benacuity0 -
How Google measure website bounce rate ?
Bounce rate is a SEO signal, but how Google measures it ? There is any explanation about this ? Does Google uses Analytics ? Maybe time between 2 clics in search results ? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Max840 -
Interpreting Keyword Difficulty Tool results
I have been running various reports using the Keyword Difficulty tool. The columns are color coded - are there one set of signals that are more important than others? I am trying to analylze why we are ranking where we are and where our competitors are weak enough to overcome in a short term. I cannot seem to find a formula for the top indicatators for moving up in ranking. One of my sites in ranking number 5 but is neck and neck with the number one site for results. The other site is number 6 for the same term but has virtually no strength in the data like links, mozrank, trust, Social, etc...The sites 7-10 are much stronger on data. Maybe since they are from the same C block that helps? Any advice or experience would be helpful.
Reporting & Analytics | | devonkrusich0 -
Analytics package beside google analytics
Hi, What analytics package can i use to track ecommerce transaction besides gogole analytics that is free of charge? Thanks Arthur
Reporting & Analytics | | VivaArturo0