What determines the page order of site:domain?
-
Whenever I use site:domain.com to check what's index, it's pretty much always in the same order. I gather from this, the order is not random. I'm also reasonably certainly it isn't related to any page strength signals or ranking results. So, does anyone know why the pages are displayed in the order they are? What information does the order of the pages tell me?
Thanks,
Ruben
-
I appreciate the responses. I guess that makes sense for why about 1/2 the pages are displayed highly, but not the other half. Our "What is an arrearage? q/a" video doesn't get much traffic, and it certainly isn't all that strong of a page for being the second page listed. However, I guess I've got some work to do on changing how google sees our site.
Thanks again,
Ruben
-
Ruben,
In the past, it was generally accepted that the order was directly related to page strength and as far as I know, that's still the case. It may be a little fuzzier now though, as I guess that there is also a relevance quotient thrown into the mix--or something to that effect--which gives some priority to those pages that relate most directly to the overall theme Google has assigned the site/domain.
-
Nothing is ever random with Google (unless it's a bug). I think those pages are ordered by how important Google sees them, meaning if a particular services page is a more searched term Google will weigh that higher than say your main services page.
Also if people seem to flow through your site a certain way and end up on certain pages more often than not Google will use that to show relevant site links. For example Google will make out when someone is looking for lawyer that they might be interested in your contact details and office location.
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
-
Why few pages have more than 100% bounce rate?
Hello All, For my ecommerce site approx more than 30k products I have. In Google Analytic approx daily for few products approx 10-15 products bounce rate show 300%, 200%, 150%, 140%, 125% how? and what is the solution? Product page daily change. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Johny123450 -
Stop getting info from Google analytics on purchases in our site
Hi guys, We have eCommerce.
Reporting & Analytics | | WayneRooney
We connected the site to the Google analytic eCommerce.
Everything was work fine until 3 weeks ago. Suddenly we stooped getting purchases information in the analytic although i see purchases in the website. We didn't change anything in the website and i really don't know how to solve this problem.
If someone here can point me where i can get some info on how to fix it it can be great. Thanks a lot!0 -
Sudden Increase In Number of Pages Indexed By Google Webmaster When No New Pages Added
Greetings MOZ Community: On June 14th Google Webmaster tools indicated an increase in the number of indexed pages, going from 676 to 851 pages. New pages had been added to the domain in the previous month. The number of pages blocked by robots increased at that time from 332 (June 1st) to 551 June 22nd), yet the number of indexed pages still increased to 851. The following changes occurred between June 5th and June 15th: -A new redesigned version of the site was launched on June 4th, with some links to social media and blog removed on some pages, but with no new URLs added. The design platform was and is Wordpress. -Google GTM code was added to the site. -An exception was made by our hosting company to ModSecurity on our server (for i-frames) to allow GTM to function. In the last ten days my web traffic has decline about 15%, however the quality of traffic has declined enormously and the number of new inquiries we get is off by around 65%. Click through rates have declined from about 2.55 pages to about 2 pages. Obviously this is not a good situation. My SEO provider, a reputable firm endorsed by MOZ, believes the extra 175 pages indexed by Google, pages that do not offer much content, may be causing the ranking decline. My developer is examining the issue. They think there may be some tie in with the installation of GTM. They are noticing an additional issue, the sites Contact Us form will not work if the GTM script is enabled. They find it curious that both issues occurred around the same time. Our domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader. Does anyone have any idea why these extra pages are appearing and how they can be removed? Anyone have experience with GTM causing issues with this? Thanks everyone!!!
Reporting & Analytics | | Kingalan1
Alan1 -
Why would our client's site be receiving significant levels of organic traffic for a keyword they do not rank for?
We have a client that has received 100+ organic visits for the keyword 'airport transfers', yet the site does not rank in the top 100 search results for this keyword. We have checked that it is not untagged PPC traffic. Truly baffling. Can anybody help?
Reporting & Analytics | | mrdavidingram0 -
Google Webmaster Preferred Domain Settings Help
I was recently running my SEO Moz report for my domain and saw a drastic drop in page rankings on the report. After some trouble shooting, I checked my Google Webmaster Tools and saw the "Preferred Domain for my Site has changed" the last week in which I saw the drastic drop. Under the "preferred domain" area, I have it set to www.marware.com but on most of the links to my site, it reads www.marware.com/ . We also have http://marware.com , but am not sure if this carries any relevance as the preferred domain is set for www.marware.com . Does the "/" make a difference in the "Preferred Domain" section? If so, how do I update it? Is there a way to confirm it is set up correctly? In the photo attached, what does "Linked Property" "Analytics Web Property" and "Associated Webmaster Tools Site" mean? Thanks in advance! T5tSCxm
Reporting & Analytics | | Khadaran0 -
Google Analytics - Tracking a Goal from 1 Domain to Another
Hi there, been combing this page for some answers - https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingSite but can't seem to figure it out. Scenario - Site A Site B Currently have 2 different GA accounts set up on each. Is it possible to Track a Goal that happens on Site B, that comes from Site A - In Site A Reports? So say, Site A has a Newsletter, directing them to Site A but promoting Site B - i'd like to track the effectiveness of the newsletter. Site A is running a white label of Site B service. Thoughts? Cheers
Reporting & Analytics | | IsHot0 -
Tracking Subdomains without access to Primary Domain
Hi, I have look after mutliple sub domains on a website and want to implement GA sub domain tracking across them. I do not have however have access to the primary domain as thats controlled by a larger organisation. I'm wondering how to set this up so it tracks correctly? Do I set the domain name in my property to the primary domain, or the main subdomain? For example I have test1.example.com (which is basically a homepage), test2.example.com, test3.example.com and test4.example.com which are various sections. As stated, I don't control the root example.com so Do I use setdomainname test1.example.com in the tracking code or setdomainname example.com. Apply filters etc and then setup profiles for each subdomain? Hope this makes sense. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | breaktheseal0 -
If I change the URL of a page, but the old page canonicalizes to the new, do I need to change my Analytics goals to get data?
I changed the URLs of some pages recently (because the same thing that affects the internal anchor text also affects the URL - grr...) but considered it not a big deal because even if I looked at the source code of the old URL, the canonical tag was now pointing to the new one. The question is - if I had URL destination goals set up for those URLs in Google Anlaytics, do I now have to change them? Or does Google somehow know that anyone getting to the new URL is the equivalent of someone getting to the old URL because of the canonical tag that exists on the old URL source code? I still do see goal conversions for some of the old URLs even since I changed them - but it could be that people are still somehow finding the old URL somewhere - or that Google only reindexed it a week or so after I made the change. Any light to shed? Thanks in advance, Aviva B
Reporting & Analytics | | debi_zyx0