What Sources to use to compile an as comprehensive list of pages indexed in Google?
-
As part of a Panda recovery initiative we are trying to get an as comprehensive list of currently URLs indexed by Google as possible.
Using the site:domain.com operator Google displays that approximately 21k pages are indexed. Scraping the results however ends after the listing of 240 links.
Are there any other sources we could be using to make the list more comprehensive? To be clear, we are not looking for external crawlers like the SEOmoz crawl tool but sources that would be confidently allow us to determine a list of URLs currently hold in the Google index.
Thank you /Thomas
-
We don't usually take private info in public questions, but if you want to, Private Message me the domain (via my profile). I'm really curious about (1) and I'd love to take a peek.
-
Thanks Pete,
As always very much appreciate your input.
1/ We aren't using any parameters and when using the filter=0 we are getting the same results. For my just done test I was only able to pull 350 pages out of 18.5k pages using the web interface. If anyone has any other thoughts on this please let me now.
2/ That is a great idea. Most of our pages live in the root directory to keep the URL slugs short so unfortunately this one will not help us.
3/ Another good idea. I understand this approach is helpful to see your coverage of wanted pages in the Google index but won't be able to help you determine superfluous pages currently in the Google index unless I misunderstood you?
4/ We are using ScreamingFrog and I agree its a fantastic tool. The index size with ScreamingFrog is showing not more than 300 pages which is our final goal.
Overall we are seeing continuous yet small drops to the index size using our approach of returning 410 response codes for unwanted pages and dedicated sitemaps to speed up delisting. See http://www.seomoz.org/q/panda-recovery-what-is-the-best-way-to-shrink-your-index-and-make-google-aware
We are just trying to get a more complete list of whats currently in the index to speed up delisting.
Thank you for your reference to the Panda post I remember reading it before and will give it another go right now.
One final question, in your experience dealing with Panda penalties, have you seen scenarios where it seems the delisting/penalizing of a site has only happened for a particular CCTLD of google or just the homepage? See http://www.seomoz.org/q/panda-penguin-penalty-not-global-but-only-firea-for-specific-google-cctlds It is what we are currently experiencing and trying to see if other people have observed something similar.
Best /Thomas
-
If you're willing to piece together multiple sources, I can definitely give you some starting points:
(1) First, dropping from 21K pages indexed in Google to 240 definitely seems odd. Are you hitting omitted results? You may have to shut off filtering in the URL (&filter=0).
(2) You can also divide the site up logically and run "site:" on sub-folders, parameters, etc. Say, for example:
site:example.com/blog
site:example.com/shop
site:example.com/uk
As long as there's some logical structure, you can use it to break the index request down into smaller chunks. Don't forget to use inurl: for URL parameters (filters, pagination, etc.).
(3) This takes a while, but split up your XML sitemaps into logical clusters - say, one for major pages, one for top-level topics/categories, one for sub-categories, one for products. That way, you'll get a cleaner could of what kind of pages are indexed, and you'll know where your gaps are.
(4) Run a desktop crawler on the site, like Xenu or Screaming Frog (Xenu is free, but PC only and harder to use. Screaming Frog has a yearly fee, but it's an excellent tool). This won't necessarily tell you what Google has indexed, but it will help you see how your site is being crawled and where problems are occurring.
I wrote a mega-post a while back on all the different kinds of duplicate content. Sometimes, just seeing examples can help you catch a problem you might be having. It's at:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
-
Does anyone have any insight on this? If the answer is simply there is no better approach than look at the limited data available through the Google UI this would be helpful as well.
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
-
To remove or not remove a redirected page from index
We have a promotion landing page which earned some valuable inbound links. Now that the promotion is over, we have redirected this page to a current "evergreen" page. But in the search results page on Google, the original promotion landing page is still showing as a top result. When clicked, it properly redirects to the newer evergreen page. But, it's a bit problematic for the original promo page to show in the search results because the snippet mentions specifics of the promo which is no longer active. So, I'm wondering what would be the net impact of using the "removal request " tool for the original page in GSC. If we don't use that tool, what kind of timing might we expect before the original page drops out of the results in favor of the new redirected page? And if we do use the removal tool on the original page, will that negate what we are attempting to do by redirecting to the new page, with regard to preserving inbound link equity?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoelevated0 -
Website dropped out from Google index
Howdy, fellow mozzers. I got approached by my friend - their website is https://www.hauteheadquarters.com She is saying that they dropped from google index over night - and, as you can see if you google their name, website url or even site: , most of the pages are not indexed. Home page is nowhere to be found - that's for sure. I know that they were indexed before. Google webmaster tools don't have any manual actions (at least yet). No sudden changes in content or backlink profile. robots.txt has some weird rule - disallow everything for EtaoSpider. I don't know if google would listen to that - robots checker in GWT says it's all good. Any ideas why that happen? Any ideas what I should check? P.S. Just noticed in GWT there was a huge drop in indexed pages within first week of August. Still no idea why though. P.P.S. Just noticed that there is noindex x-robots-tag in headers... Anyone knows where this can be set?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
Google Search Console - Indexed Pages
I am performing a site audit and looking at the "Index Status Report" in GSC. This shows a total of 17 URLs have been indexed. However when I look at the Sitemap report in GSC it shows 9,000 pages indexed. Also, when I perform a site: search on Google I get 24,000 results. Can anyone help me to explain these anomalies?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | richdan0 -
Google Frequently Indexing - Good or Bad?
Hi, My website is only 4 months old and receives about 40 to 50 organic visits every day. It currently has about 100 pages out of which only 3-4 rank in the top 10 for the target KWs. I usually try to publish, at least 1 article a day but sometimes certain articles are more than 2000 words long with a few of infographics and hence takes way more time (maybe even 3 days to publish one) Only over the last week, I am observing that every time i am publishing a page (usually daily) google is indexing them the same day. This I have heard happens for moderately big sites but my site is really small at this stage. Note: For the first 80 pages, I used to "fetch as googlebot" in webmasters as otherwise my site would be crawled once in 2 weeks but over the last 3-4 weeks, i rely on googles scheduled visits. Is this a good or bad sign? I would like to assume its good because of my engagement. Though for only organic visits, my Gogle Analytics bounce rate is 65% in analytics out of the remaining 35%, the avg time on site >7 mins. That means if someone sticks to my site, they consume a lot of my content. Also, since analytics' bounce rate is not same as the search bounce (back button) I would like to consider that the bounce is actually lesser than that.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dwautism0 -
When does Google index a fetched page?
I have seen where it will index on of my pages within 5 minutes of fetching, but have also read that it can take a day. I'm on day #2 and it appears that it has still not re-indexed 15 pages that I fetched. I changed the meta-description in all of them, and added content to nearly all of them, but none of those changes are showing when I do a site:www.site/page I'm trying to test changes in this manner, so it is important for me to know WHEN a fetched page has been indexed, or at least IF it has. How can I tell what is going on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
New Web Page Not Indexed
Quick question with probably a straightforward answer... We created a new page on our site 4 days ago, it was in fact a mini-site page though I don't think that makes a difference... To date, the page is not indexed and when I use 'Fetch as Google' in WT I get a 'Not Found' fetch status... I have also used the'Submit URL' in WT which seemed to work ok... We have even resorted to 'pinging' using Pinglar and Ping-O-Matic though we have done this cautiously! I know social media is probably the answer but we have been trying to hold back on that tactic as the page relates to a product that hasn't quite launched yet and we do not want to cause any issues with the vendor! That said, I think we might have to look at sharing the page socially unless anyone has any other ideas? Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Why the archive sub pages are still indexed by Google?
Why the archive sub pages are still indexed by Google? I am using the WordPress SEO by Yoast, and selected the needed option to get these pages no-index in order to avoid the duplicate content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelNewman1 -
All page files in root? Or to use directories?
We have thousands of pages on our website; news articles, forum topics, download pages... etc - and at present they all reside in the root of the domain /. For example: /aosta-valley-i6816.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html We are considering moving over to a new URL system where we use directories. For example, the above URLs would be the following: /images/aosta-valley-i6816.html
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
/forums/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html Would we have any benefit in using directories for SEO purposes? Would our current system perhaps mean too many files in the root / flagging as spammy? Would it be even better to use the following system which removes file endings completely and suggests each page is a directory: /images/aosta-valley/6816/
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde/1101/
/forums/what-is-best-addon/3360/ If so, what would be better: /images/aosta-valley/6816/ or /images/6816/aosta-valley/ Just looking for some clarity to our problem! Thank you for your help guys!0