"not selected" is gone from Google Webmaster Tools Index Status Advanced

[tdawson09]

Just noticed today that the "not selected" has been removed from the Index status, Advanced section of Google Webmaster Tools. Anyone know why.

I've used this metric to determine how or why Google was not selecting pages, particularly to gauge canonical's, 301's and duplicate content.

It will be missed if gone for good.

[tdawson09]

It's kind of a cat and mouse game with Google. They are trying to be more transparent, but at the same time keeping a lot of information close to the vest. They don't want us to figure out their secret sauce.

[metrosav]

This is terrible.  Not Selected is very useful info.    I was hoping the would expand on it to let you see which URLs were "not selected"

[tdawson09]

Yes, I reviewed the thread over on Google product forums. Not much of a discussion on it yet. If the "not selected" metrics were accurate, it did give us some additional information. I'm all for more information from Google, not less. Taking this away may be another step for keeping us guessing.

[CompucastWeb]

There's a conversation about this over at Google's product forums. After someone else brought up the topic, a "top contributor" replied, "Yes it has been removed, whilst it was useful for some, it caused confusion to the majority of WMT users." (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/9TMDaZgebKQz)

Not sure how authoritative that top user is on the subject, but that doesn't sound good. We were just starting to use that option in GWT more.