Webmaster Tools Indexed pages vs. Sitemap?
-
Looking at Google Webmaster Tools and I'm noticing a few things, most sites I look at the number of indexed pages in the sitemaps report is usually less than 100% (i.e. something like 122 indexed out of 134 submitted or something) and the number of indexed pages in the indexed status report is usually higher. So for example, one site says over 1000 pages indexed in the indexed status report but the sitemap says something like 122 indexed.
My question: Is the sitemap report always a subset of the URLs submitted in the sitemap? Will the number of pages indexed there always be lower than or equal to the URLs referenced in the sitemap?
Also, if there is a big disparity between the sitemap submitted URLs and the indexed URLs (like 10x) is that concerning to anyone else?
-
Unfortunately not, the closest you'll get is selecting a long period of time in Analytics and then exporting all the pages that received organic search traffic. If you could then cross check them with your list of URLs on your site it could provide you with a small list. But I would still check them in Google to make sure they aren't indexed. As I said it's not the best way.
-
Is there a reliable way to determine which pages have not been indexed?
-
Great answer by Tom already, but I want to add that probably images and other types of content whom are mostly not by default included in sitemaps could also be among the indexed 'pages'.
-
There's no golden rule that your sitemap > indexed pages or vice versa.
If you have more URLs in your sitemap than you have indexed pages, you want to look at the pages not indexed to see why that is the case. It could be that those pages have duplicate and/or thin content, and so Google is ignoring them. A canonical tag might be instructing Google to ignore them. Or the pages might be off the site navigation and are more than 4 links/jumps away from the homepage or another page on the site, make them hard to find.
Conversely, if you had lots more pages indexed than in your sitemap, it could be a navigation or URL duplication problem. Check to see if any of the pages are duplicate versions caused by things like dynamic URLs generated through search on the site or the site navigation, for example. If those pages are the only physical pages that you have created and you know every single one has been submitted in a sitemap - and so any other indexed URLs would be unaccounted for, that may well be cause for concern, so check nothing is being indexed multiple times.
Just a couple of scenarios, but I hope it helps.
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
-
How often does the indexing take place?
Hi there, I am currently looking at one of my campaigns and have noticed that since i last checked on the 31st Jan there have been no change in analytics despite me having done work on the campaign itself. I saw in the external links section that it said "38 down since last index" and I was just wondering how often the index takes place. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | VoodooCreativeLtd0 -
Moz is showing different "errors" than Webmaster tools
I have set up my Moz campaign and the crawl errors are showing multiple duplicate content and page titles however when I check my webmaster tools data, these errors are not showing up. Is this normal and who should I listen to?
Reporting & Analytics | | LabelMedia0 -
Have You Ever Gotten False or Odd Notifications from Google Webmaster Tools?
I just got an email for one of my client websites from Google Webmaster Tools letting me know that the Google Bot could not access the website? The notification indicated that there may be a robots.txt issue that prevented crawling, but that they would try something to crawl it again. In this situation, we had just created a new Webmaster Tools account for the client, and there were (are) two GWT accounts now for the website, one that is incorrectly set to http://clientwebsite.com and the other that is set to www.clientwebsite.com. One of them reports zero errors, and the other reports an odd crawl error. Anyone encountered this type of thing before?
Reporting & Analytics | | williammarlow0 -
How to get metrics on Home page image link to youtube video in lightbox
My home page has a explainer video. Is there a way to get metrics or analytics data about who watch or don't watch the video? http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com For example, if I have 100 unique visitors on this page and my video get 33 views, 33% saw the video! I think the data provide by youtube are not accurate, my site has a avarage of 40 visitors/day and my video was saw 84 times sinces it is online, 14 days ago. On that 84 clicks, I most have click 30 times!!! When you lend on my home page, you can't miss it! http://screencast.com/t/ZbIWYl0W I don't believe only a few visitors saw it. Conversation rate has increase. I use Google Analytics, is there a code or something that can be done to get metrics or data more accurate then the .Ananalytics" provide in my youtube control panel? Please HELP! thank you, BigBlaze
Reporting & Analytics | | BigBlaze2050 -
Multiple Domains in Webmaster Tools
Our client has four domains all redirecting to one domain. aquatron.info, www.aquatron.info, and www.aquatronhardwatersolution.com are all set up to redirect to aquatronhardwatersolution.com. I would like to make sure that we are getting the most link juice and that they are set up correctly in Google Webmaster Tools. Any help would be great. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | PolarisWebSEO0 -
Tool to check GA code present on every page?
Is there a tool to check if the Google Analytics code is present on every page of a website? Thanks for your help!
Reporting & Analytics | | gerardoH0 -
Yahoo wont Index my site...???
For some reason every time I get an SEO report card, or even check for my site on Yahoo, im never there. An the Report card always tells me that I am not being indexed by Yahoo. I don't understand bc my site is indexed by Google and Bing beautifully. I feel like I am missing out on good potential traffic...Any suggestions?
Reporting & Analytics | | Caseman0 -
What factors does the Keyword Difficulty Tool measure?
Hi Guys I am new to this community and finding loads of informative stuff here. The keyword difficulty tool looks very interesting. I think google keyword tool competetion field is based on PPC competetion? Will i be right in saying that the moz keyword difficulty tool measures top 10 ranking pages, their age, backlinks etc?
Reporting & Analytics | | SamBuck0