Indexed pages
-
Just started a site audit and trying to determine the number of pages on a client site and whether there are more pages being indexed than actually exist. I've used four tools and got four very different answers...
- Google Search Console: 237 indexed pages
- Google search using site command: 468 results
- MOZ site crawl: 1013 unique URLs
- Screaming Frog: 183 page titles, 187 URIs (note this is a free licence, but should cut off at 500)
Can anyone shed any light on why they differ so much? And where lies the truth?
-
Another option is if the site uses a CMS. If so, then you can create a sitemap for content pages/posts etc,.
Personally, I'm with Krzysztof Furtak on SF. Screaming Frog rocks. It'll find most pages, except perhaps Orphan pages as it wouldn't be able to find a link to crawl to discover the page.
If it's really important to get as many pages as possible, I'd do the following (I've put an Astrix (*) next to ones that some people may think are a tad extreme)
- Run a Screaming Frog crawl
- Grab a sitemap from your CMS
- Check any server-based analytics (AWSTATS etc)
- Check your access_log file & parse out URLs in there**(*)**
- site: queries, with & without www, and also using * as a subdomain (use something like Moz's toolbar to export)
- As Krzysztof suggests, Scrapebox would extract data too, but be careful scraping, you may get an IP slap.(*)
- Export crawl data from Moz & a tool such as Deep Crawl
- Throw the pages from all into Excel and de-dupe.
- Once you have a de-duped list, as an optional last step, go back to Screaming Frog and enter list mode (I have the paid version, not sure if it's possible with the free one) and run a crawl over all the de-duped URLs to get status codes etc
If you're going to do this sort of thing a fair bit - buy a Screaming Frog license, it's an awesome tool and can be useful in a multitude of situations.
-
The site: command is handy for asking Google what pages it knows about, however if Muzzmoz wants to know the number of pages on a site, you'd need more than this.
Also, re: your different ways or querying, I like to use:
site:*.domain.com - This can show other subdomains too, that may otherwise be missed
-
Ok so check with site something under 1000 pages and go to the last results page. You'll see that there'll be different number (in almost all cases).
-
I Will Always Prefer To Check Manually Using Site Command Because, site: operator, which will show us how many pages Google currently has indexed for the domain.
There Will Be Difference Between Index status in search console and current index as search console update the data after few days.
The number of indexed URLs is almost always significantly smaller than the number of crawled URLs, because Total indexed excludes URLs identified as duplicates, non-canonical or those that contain a meta no index tag.
Also, Check For Index(Preferred) Version Of Your Site
For E.g-
You can check More About this Here - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2642366?hl=en
-
Hi
Most accurate number is from screaming frog (if you have less than 500 pages or paid version if more than 500).
Google indexes what it wants and if good enough to show in google index. If some pages are similar, got quality issues, blocked by robots etc then it won't show all. BTW don't think number in GSC or google index is good, check it manually because there can be 468 but in fact 200 only.
Moz can have "historical" pages that now don't exists or don't care about quality issues.
The truth is in screaming frog - most accurate number. If you used google user agent then number is the max that can appear in google index. If screaming frog user agent with turned off robots then you'll see bigger number (but google won't show it because of blocks).
If you want to check what's indexed then use tool like scrapebox. First get all urls (maybe without images if you don't care), then check indexed with sb. What's not indexed, can have some issues.
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
-
Indexing Issue of Dynamic Pages
Hi All, I have a query for which i am struggling to find out the answer. I unable to retrieve URL using "site:" query on Google SERP. However, when i enter the direct URL or with "info:" query then a snippet appears. I am not able to understand why google is not showing URL with "site:" query. Whether the page is indexed or not? Or it's soon going to be deindexed. Secondly, I would like to mention that this is a dynamic URL. The index file which we are using to generate this URL is not available to Google Bot. For instance, There are two different URL's. http://www.abc.com/browse/ --- It's a parent page.
Technical SEO | | SameerBhatia
http://www.abc.com/browse/?q=123 --- This is the URL, generated at run time using browse index file. Google unable to crawl index file of browse page as it is unable to run independently until some value will get passed in the parameter and is not indexed by Google. Earlier the dynamic URL's were indexed and was showing up in Google for "site:" query but now it is not showing up. Can anyone help me what is happening here? Please advise. Thanks0 -
Trying to find all internal links to a specific page (without index)
Hi guys -- Still waiting on Moz to index a page of mine. We launched a new site over two months ago. In the meantime, I really just need a list of internal links to a specific page because I want to change its URL. Does anybody know how to find that list (of internal links to 1 of my pages) without the Moz index? I appreciate the help!
Technical SEO | | marchexmarketingmcc1 -
Home Pages of Several Websites are disappearing / reappearing in Google Index
Hi, I periodically use the Google site command to confirm that our client's websites are fully indexed. Over the past few months I have noticed a very strange phenomenon which is happening for a small subset of our client's websites... basically the home page keeps disappearing and reappearing in the Google index every few days. This is isolated to a few of our client's websites and I have also noticed that it is happening for some of our client's competitor's websites (over which we have absolutely no control). In the past I have been led to believe that the absence of the home page in the index could imply a penalty of some sort. This does not seem to be the case since these sites continue to rank the same in various Google searches regardless of whether or not the home page is listed in the index. Below are some examples of sites of our clients where the home page is currently not indexed - although they may be indexed by the time you read this and try it yourself. Note that most of our clients are in Canada. My questions are: 1. has anyone else experienced/noticed this? 2. any thoughts on whether this could imply some sort of penalty? or could it just be a bug in Google? 3. does Google offer a way to report stuff like this? Note that we have been building websites for over 10 years so we have long been aware of issues like www vs. non-www, canonicalization, and meta content="noindex" (been there done that in 2005). I could be wrong but I do not believe that the site would keep disappearing and reappearing if something like this was the issue. Please feel free to scrutinize the home pages to see if I have overlooked something obvious - I AM getting old. site:dietrichlaw.ca - this site has continually ranked in the top 3 for [kitchener personal injury lawyers] for many years. site:burntucker.com - since we took over this site last year it has moved up to page 1 for [ottawa personal injury lawyers] site:bolandhowe.com - #1 for [aurora personal injury lawyers] site:imranlaw.ca - continually ranked in the top 3 for [mississauga immigration lawyers]. site:canadaenergy.ca - ranks #3 for [ontario hydro plans] Thanks in advance! Jim Donovan, President www.wethinksolutions.com
Technical SEO | | wethink0 -
Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages
Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content > Wordpress Comments Page
Hello Moz Community, I've create a campaign in Moz and received hundreds of errors, regarding "Duplicate Page Content". After some review, I've found that 99% of the errors in the "Duplicate Page Content" report are occurring due to Wordpress creating a new comment page (with the original post detail), if a comment is made on a blog post. The post comment can be displayed on the original blog post, but also viewable on a second URL, created by Wordpress. http://www.Example.com/example-post http://www.Example.com/example-post/comment-page-1 Anyone else experience this issue in Wordpress or this same type of report in Moz? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | DomainUltra0 -
If a permanent redirect is supposed to transfer SEO from the old page to the new page, why has my domain authority been impacted?
For example, we redirected our old domain to a new one (leaving no duplicate content on the old domain) and saw a 40% decrease in domain authority. Isn't a permanent redirect supposed to transfer link authority to the place it is redirecting to? Did I do something wrong?
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Google Indexing
Hi Everybody, I am having kind of an issue when it comes to the results Google is showing on my site. I have a multilingual site, which is main language is Catalan. But of course if I am looking results in Spanish (google.es) or in English (google.com) I want Google to show the results with the proper URL, title and descriptions. My brand is "Vallnord" so if you type this in Google you will be displayed the result in Catalan (Which is not optimized at all yet) but if you search "vallnord.com/es" only then you will be displayed the result in Spanish What do I have to do in order for Google to read this the way I want? Regards, Guido.
Technical SEO | | SilbertAd0 -
No. of links on a page
Is it true that If there is a huge number of links from the source page then each link will provide very little value in terms of passing link juice ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050