Substantial difference between Number of Indexed Pages and Sitemap Pages
-
Hey there,
I am doing a website audit at the moment.
I've notices substantial differences in the number of pages indexed (search console), the number of pages in the sitemap and the number I am getting when I crawl the page with screamingfrog (see below). Would those discrepancies concern you? The website and its rankings seems fine otherwise.
Total indexed: 2,360 (Search Consule)
About 2,920 results (Google search "site:example.com")
Sitemap: 1,229 URLs
Screemingfrog Spider: 1,352 URLsCheers,
Jochen -
Those discrepancies would not concern me, but there are some differences between all the things you list:
Total indexed: 2,360 Search Console - this is likely a reasonably accurate list of the number of pages you have indexed in Google. You could use a tool like URL Profiler to check index status of specific URLs.
About 2,920 results Google search "site:example.com" - site: search is less accurate and will likely return a different number each time you do it, even if it's just moments apart.
Sitemap: 1,229 URLs: these are URLs you added to a sitemap because they are priority pages you want to make sure Google has indexed and hopefully ranked. You control this number.
Screaming Frog Spider: 1,352 URLs - Screaming Frog is going to start on your homepage and crawl the site attempting to discover as many URLs as possible. If you are not linking to a page, SF won't be able to crawl it. Google on the other hand may have old pages, old URL structures or pages that were linked from an external website in their index and they won't forget them.
A really important question is: how many pages do you have that you want to be indexed? Is Google's index bloated with pages that you want to keep out? Figure these things out, and then try to adjust your sitemaps, noindex, robots.txt as needed.
-
Thanks for your reply Dmitrii,
we have excluded all query parameters in search console so this shouldn't be an issue. What is also strange is that when I try to scrape the SERPS via a site:example.com search Google is only showing a fraction (about 700) of the 2,920 results.
Cheers,
Jochen
- ★
- ★
- ☆
- ☆
- ☆
MozPoints: 810
Good Answers: 47
Endorsed Answers: 20">- ★
- ★
- ☆
- ☆
- ☆
-
Hi there.
I think that as long as rankings are good (especially historically), there is no reason to worry, because google includes in index pages, which wouldn't be in sitemap - for example pages, generated with query parameters (domain.com?x=value). Sometimes these pages do not really exist by themselves (like filters in online stores), they only exist "on the fly".
Hope this makes sense and 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
-
Site move-Redirecting and Indexing dynamic pages
I have an interesting problem I would like to pick someone else’s brain. Our business has over 80 different products, each with a dedicated page (specs, gallery, copy etc.) on the main website. Main site itself, is used for presentation purpose only and doesn’t offer a direct path to purchase. A few years ago, to serve a specific customer segment, we have created a site where customers can perform a quick purchase via one of our major strategic partners. Now we are looking to migrate this old legacy service, site and all its pages under the new umbrella (main domain/CMS). Problem #1 Redirects/ relevancy/ SEO equity Ideally, we could simply perform 1:1 - 301 redirect from old legacy product pages to the relevant new site products pages. The problem is that Call to action (buy), some images and in some cases, parts of the copy must be changed to some degree to accommodate this segment. The second problem is in our dev and creative team. There are not enough resources to dedicate for the creation of the new pages so we can perform 1:1 301 redirects. So, the potential decision is to redirect a visitor to the dynamic page URL where parent product page will be used to apply personalization rules and a new page with dynamic content (buy button, different gallery etc.) is displayed to the user (see attached diagram). If we redirect directly to parent URL and then apply personalization rules, URL will stay the same and this is what we are trying to avoid (we must mention in the URL that user is on purchase path, otherwise this redirect and page where the user lands, can be seen as deceptive). Also Dynamic pages will have static URLs and unique page/title tag and meta description. Problem #2 : Indexation/Canonicalization The dynamic page is canonicalized to the parent page and does have nearly identical content/look and feel, but both serve a different purpose and we want both indexed in search. Hope my explanation is clear and someone can chip in. Any input is greatly appreciated! vCm2Dt.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin1 -
Google does not want to index my page
I have a site that is hundreds of page indexed on Google. But there is a page that I put in the footer section that Google seems does not like and are not indexing that page. I've tried submitting it to their index through google webmaster and it will appear on Google index but then after a few days it's gone again. Before that page had canonical meta to another page, but it is removed now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | odihost0 -
Sitemap: unique sitemap or different sitemaps by Country
Hi guys, i have a question about sitemaps. We are doing an international site, e.x. www.offers.com for landing page and www.offers.com/br for brazil, www.offers.com/it for italy, etc... i don't if we should do an unique sitemap for all countries or separate sitemaps by country, e.x.: unique sitemap: www.offers.com/sitemap.xml - including all sitemaps www.offers.com/br/sitemap.xml - sitemap for brazil market only. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thekiller990 -
How do I get my Golf Tee Times pages to index?
I understand that Google does not want to index other search results pages, but we have a large amount of discount tee times that you can search for and they are displayed as helpful listing pages, not search results. Here is an example: http://www.activegolf.com/search-northern-california-tee-times?Date=8%2F21%2F2013&datePicker=8%2F21%2F2013&loc=San+Diego%2C+CA&coupon=&zipCode=&search= These pages are updated daily with the newest tee times. We don't exactly want every URL with every parameter indexed, but at least http://www.activegolf.com/search-northern-california-tee-times. It's weird because all of the tee times are viewable in the HTML and are not javascript. An example of similar pages would be Yelp, for example this page is indexed just fine - http://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=dogwalkers&find_loc=Lancaster%2C+MA I know ActiveGolf.com is not as powerful as Yelp but it's still strange that none of our tee times search pages are being indexed. Would appreciate any ideas out there!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CAndrew14.0 -
Are pages with a canonical tag indexed?
Hello here, here are my questions for you related to the canonical tag: 1. If I put online a new webpage with a canonical tag pointing to a different page, will this new page be indexed by Google and will I be able to find it in the index? 2. If instead I apply the canonical tag to a page already in the index, will this page be removed from the index? Thank you in advance for any insights! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Volusion store product pages will not index
Hello, I have moved over to Volusion and was wondering if you guys know of any SEO practices that are Volusion specific. i have been working on this site now for 2 months and my impressions and rankings have dropped substantially My 301 redirects where in place before I flipped over and my keywords / titles/ tags etc.. are in place. However i am still not making any progress in the engines. I have noticed that my products are not being indexed per Webmaster tools. I have heard that volusion has something set up to where you must purchase their SEO package in order to rank. I am really at my wits end and currently I thinking about taking a loss and reverting back to my old Shoppe Pro site. Any help would be very appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kerry0217
.0 -
How do I index these parameter generated pages?
Hey guys, I've got an issue with a site I'm working on. A big chunk of the content (roughly 500 pages) is delivered using parameters on a dynamically generated page. For example: www.domain.com/specs/product?=example - where "example' is the product name Currently there is no way to get to these pages unless you enter the product name into the search box and access it from there. Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless we find some other way to link to these pages they're basically invisible to search engines, right? What I'm struggling with is a method to get them indexed without doing something like creating a directory map type page of all of the links on it, which I guess wouldn't be a terrible idea as long as it was done well. I've not encountered a situation like this before. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CodyWheeler0 -
Tool to calculate the number of pages in Google's index?
When working with a very large site, are there any tools that will help you calculate the number of links in the Google index? I know you can use site:www.domain.com to see all the links indexed for a particular url. But what if you want to see the number of pages indexed for 100 different subdirectories (i.e. www.domain.com/a, www.domain.com/b)? is there a tool to help automate the process of finding the number of pages from each subdirectory in Google's index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0
