Are your Google indexed pages dropping?

[Animation]

Once upon a time all my pages were indexed by Google. Now it's down to 25%:cry:
But the good news is that Yahoo, MSN and other SE's still have nearly all my pages indexed.

On checking a few sites here I see a drop in Google still going on.
Is anyone getting an increase in Google yet? Is there any light at the end of the Google tunnel?
Many SE forums are complaining bitterly about this, many sites beginning to loose their business.

[JustPo]

There's still increasing the number of pages of my site that are indexed... but very, very slowly. Last time I looked, I think it was up to 197.

Oooops! They lost one. 196 now (but still up a few from a week or so ago)

Does the number of indexed pages depend on which G00gle is spitting out the number? Or is there just one standard across-the-G00gle-board index number?

[China Tea]

Don't be shocked but I don't know where to go to find how google is indexing my pages::confused:

is it the site:www.mysite.com search?

please, pretty pretty please, tell me

[rotarysteve]

I'm using google sitemaps to see what is indexed. But, I suppose that, again, it depends on what datacenter I hit. One day I only had 17 pages show up.

At one time with a 47 page site, google had close to 70 pages indexed. It did this by having up to 3, differently dated, cached copies of the same page. Now it seems I'm down to 34 pages, but haven't given it much of a comparision to see what is there. These 34 pages actually include a couple of excel files and a couple of microsoft .doc pages. So, google has trimmed me down by over 50%. For my application, this actually is what I want to happen, as I suspect as our club goes into a new year on July 1st, there may be a redesign. Boiling the site down to the more important pages, and not index the rest. I have a different application than most though.

[JustPo]

I don't know where to go to find how google is indexing my pages::confused:


China Tea... when I use G00gle sitemaps to check "indexed pages in your site" and click on that link, the page opens up with
site:http://(mydomain).com
(use your own domain name) as the G00gle search term. That way, it's still showing 196 pages indexed.. same as last night.

However, I just tried a G00gle search for
site:mydomain.com (without the "http://)
and then it's showed 398 pages indexed!

Curiouser and curiouser! :-?

[China Tea]

Just when I thought I will never get an answer:

That's also what I been using but I did not know that that's what people mean when they say "Google has indexed certain number of pages". Thank you.

In that case mine gets 2630 for both site:shopdrops.com and site:http://shopdrops.com and 1150 for site:http://www.shopdrops.com. Why the differece? I don't know.:confused:

My google referral of unique hits is still very low compared to what it used to give me 2 weeks ago.:?

[webado]

The www and the non www form of a url are considered separately by Google. It doesn't really combine results for them. Thats' because technically speaking they could be different sites, though 99% of the time they refer tot he same site. In rare cases there can actually be 2 different sites , one with www and teh other without www. There is no law that says they have to be the same site and some people take advantage of this I guess - or it's a configuration error on the server that allows that.

[China Tea]

I am giving up on the Google quest for now because it seems that Google favors no one at this point. Even other SEO forums talk about this "fall-out" which started happening 2 weeks ago.

Look, similar index searches I did with MSN gives
12,827 for site:shopdrops.com and
1,489 results containing site:http://www.shopdrops.com and site:www.shopdrops.com .

Stretching the search a little farther to Yahoo (my host) gives me:

2,250 from site:shopdrops.com
1,780 from www.shopdrops.com and 0 from
site:http://www.shopdrops.com:confused:

Yahoo indexes my pages like Google does: half-heartedly if either had a heart in the first place.:shock: I should be disappointed at how YAHOO indexes my pages for after all I pay Yahoo every month and pay a little percentage for every sale, regardless of whether it referred it or not BUT I don't anymore, because I have totally given up on my relationship with Y. :mad:

[rotarysteve]

It's all within the grand scope of marketing.

Let the site stand upon itself..........

[Sharron]

oh wow, according to my google site map info, google has indexed 2 yes 2 of my pages.

the mission control page! and ah I have already forgotten the other one, but it was not the index page.

[China Tea]

Wow . . .

You sound pleasantly grateful to Google, Sharron . :-D Or are you surprised the lady indexed you at all?:-D

Google - why do you sleep on the job?:mad:

[webado]

CT, how many pages does your site have? Google has indexed 2620.

[Sharron]

Wow . . .

You sound pleasantly grateful to Google, Sharron . :-D Or are you surprised the lady indexed you at all?:-D

Google - why do you sleep on the job?:mad:

oh I just remembered the other page indexed was the guestbook index.php page, which I thought was protected by my robots txt file. I will have to go again to check that.

I am surprised that those pages are the only two indexed by google. I would have thought at least the index page would be.

{User-agent: *
Disallow: /test/
Disallow: /dev/
Disallow: /designs/
Disallow: /gbook/
Disallow: /gbook2/
Disallow: /temp-images/
Disallow: /gallery-images/
Disallow: /bzabook.php_files/} yes /gbook/ is protected

I guess I don't understand what indexed means. My pages certainly show up in plenty of google searches. I only have 24 pages that are accessible or not protected by the robots txt file.

[webado]

It may have been indexed from before you blocked it in robots.txt .

Use rel="nofollow" on the links to the guestbook.

[China Tea]

Yeah, Christina - Google has indexed 2620 pf my pages recently but she the unique visitors she used to give me has dropped down miserably . . .

MSN's search of link:shopdrops.com gives 20000 +
Google used to give more than that.

[JustPo]

Yeah, Christina - Google has indexed 2620 pf my pages . . .

MSN's search of link:shopdrops.com gives 20000 +
Google used to give more than that.

CT, link: is not the same as site:
MSN's search of site:shopdrops.com gives 1637 results, so actually about 1,000 fewer than Google.

[Animation]

CT, link: is not the same as site:

For anyone not sure of the differences.....

site: indexed pages of your site
allinurl: pages that refer to your site's url
link: pages that link to your site
cache: the current cache of your site
info: information we have about your site
related: pages that are similar to your site

(this last one is a real puzzle to me as when I try this for my site it lists, among other sites, one of Christina's sites as being similar!)


If you go to your Google 'index' sitemap stats you are given these options..any of these 'clicked' gives indexed pages/referals/links to site etc.
You can do this directly from the normal google search box without having to go to stats by typing in any of these followed by your domain, then click 'search.'
Over the months many on forums such as this one have seen the site:
numbers fall and fall...something to do with BigDaddy???:cry:

[JWJ]

My main concern is that I have 170 pages indexed .... but I only have 40. The extra's come from pages in my guestbook. When I found out Google was indexing my Guestbook I blocked it through my robots.txt file. That was a long time ago. I had hoped that Google would drop the indexing eventually, but they're still there. Is there any way of forcing a page to be un-indexed?

[lucky]

The people posting in this thread may be interested in the debate going on in thread http://forum.statcounter.com/vb/showthread.php?t=20780 beginning at post 11.

It's between Arne and RodB. What is being discussed could portend problems we might have with Google because of the statcounter code.

It can't hurt to keep an ear to the ground on this development. It will be interesting to see where this thing goes, and I don't necessarily mean the debate. :confused:

[Animation]

Although my site's index on google has been dropping, as many other sites have, if I enter site:mydomain and instaed of clicking on 'search' I click on 'images' ALL 208 of my site images appear like magic.
I daresay all other sites are OK too imagewise, but don't know what it may mean.
But then, who understands what ladies are up to anyway at the best of times?:-D

[China Tea]

Thanks, Animation
site: indexed pages of your site
allinurl: pages that refer to your site's url
link: pages that link to your site
cache: the current cache of your site
info: information we have about your site
related: pages that are similar to your site

Just po wrote:

CT, link: is not the same as site:
MSN's search of site:shopdrops.com gives 1637 results, so actually about 1,000 fewer than Google.

oh, okey . . .

Lucky suggested:

The people posting in this thread may be interested in the debate going on in thread http://forum.statcounter.com/vb/showthread.php?t=20780 beginning at post 11.

I will revisit that thread, thanks.

Still :confused: about Google's roller coasting tactics.

[Animation]

I have been looking at more forums which have discussed this subject of Google dropping indexed pages.
Some guys have suggested that the pages remaining were those containing the most text. Others wern't too sure about this.
So, I did a check of my pages being indexed by Google and found that the majority are indeed those containing the most text on my site. Those not in the index have little text, if any.
Maybe the new Google algorithm is getting rather "texty".......that's so near to Google being "sexy.":-D

[benjimon]

I manage six websites, all non content based with a total of some 12,000 pages. Some 5,000 pages are at puggled dot com .

I found the number of hits increase over the past 3 months as the ranking increases and more pages get indexed.

For reference, the pages were autocreated from a list of keywords and links (software in alpha version). Keywords are generated for each page along with unique meta and title tags. As far as google is concerned it's good stuff.

[China Tea]

aww, rotary:

Maybe the new Google algorithm is getting rather "texty".......that's so near to Google being "sexy."

Does that mean texty = meaty = sexy?

Whatever happened to the "bone-sweet?":-D :shock:

[jonra01]

oh wow, according to my google site map info, google has indexed 2 yes 2 of my pages.

the mission control page! and ah I have already forgotten the other one, but it was not the index page.
Google has 23 pages indexed on your site - Results 1 - 23 of 23 English pages from www.designbyatfb.com

[Sharron]

Google has 23 pages indexed on your site - Results 1 - 23 of 23 English pages from www.designbyatfb.com (http://www.designbyatfb.com)

well that is good to know. why then does the sitemaps show only those 2?

[webado]

Do you see a statement liks this at the bottom?

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ... already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Or maybe 2 are the pages that have been indexed in the particular Google index you happen to be looking at at that moment.

Do you see reference to "similar pages" ?

[Animation]

well that is good to know. why then does the sitemaps show only those 2?

At top of Google page you will find this......(note ref to 24!)

Results 1 - 2 of about 24 from www.designbyatfb.com for . (0.03 seconds)

[Sharron]

http://www.designbyatfb.com/temp-images/googleindex.gif

[webado]

You landed on a different Google datacenter which is only showing this much. As was said it before, there are dozens of them and not in sync at all.

[rotarysteve]

gee wiz!!!!!!! :shock: Went into my google sitemap account and they dropped everything but the index page. The last I looked, maybe a week ago there where about 47 pages, now 1 page. Realizing that this could be a rogue datacenter, I'll check later to see. But as curiosity has struck, I looked at that 123seo thingy and all of the datacenters are dropping pages across the board, nothing under 30 pages yet though. I've been wanting to be rid of some pages, but not all of them. I'll be sure to check from home as that is a different ISP and I'll get different google centers.

Things that make me go Hmmmmm?????

Maybe google read some of my posts, :rolleyes:

[webado]

Actually I find mine to finally be correct, with little variation - 34-37 pages indexed. They all are missing a couple of pages, and have a couple of "should be dead" pages (but since I didn't actually kill them maybe that's ok).

Haven't checked other sites I have though, too much time is required.

[rotarysteve]

I checked msn and yahoo. msn has 47 pages, which is right on. Yahoo has 16, which is o.k. with me. Google still shows 1 page. I'll have to look at this as a positive. I'll play with it more from the work computer later in the day, but even in a regular search I can't find anything other than the home page. Can't wait to get home to see what I get there.....

[rotarysteve]

To be happy or not to be happy.

Have I ever said that I don't like google????????

Home now and same results. Home page #1 but nothing else in the index. Rogue datacenter.

Dunno, google can just Kiss my...........

Too Funny!!

[Liz Y]

Rogue datacenter.
Dunno, google can just Kiss my...........
Speak for yourself, Steve - as for me, they don't deserve such a privilege! :wink:

I'm just glad to know that it's nothing I did wrong, and I'm in good company. When checking the data today -
( http://www.123seotools.com/google/datacenters/saturation/ ) the numbers have revised up in small increments, but now 4 servers are showing zero -
66.249.87.99
66.249.87.104
66.102.11.106
66.249.87.107
a few days ago there was only 1 zero server for me, and everybody else, too.

AND, as my sales go down, my useless image hits are still going up! :cry:
When trying to figure out a pattern, the only thing I can come up with is that the indexed pages are all at least more than 10 months old, and it makes no difference whether they were revised or not.
It's weird; for example, I have 3 USA Flag versions, and the only one indexed now is the 1-color version. People searching for Vector USA Flag see only that, and usually don't buy it. I put a link on that page to the color versions, but I think sometimes people just don't look past the visual...

[jonra01]

I have 3 USA Flag versions, and the only one indexed now is the 1-color version. People searching for Vector USA Flag see only that, and usually don't buy it. I put a link on that page to the color versions, but I think sometimes people just don't look past the visual...
If you are getting enough hits to make it worthwhile, you might want to think about putting thumbnail images of the color versions on that page. Something on the order of "people who looked at this graphic also looked at..."

[JustPo]

but now 4 servers are showing zero -
a few days ago there was only 1 zero server for me, and everybody else, too.


Same here. 4 zeros now, up from 1. The datacenters that were evidently including all my old pages a few days ago seem to have dropped those now, and those are all showing one fewer page indexed than all of the other datacenters. All the rest of them are still holding steady.

[webado]

Those 4 datacenters are not responding at all - the servers are dead at the moment. You can't tell if they have data or not.

[Animation]

To be happy or not to be happy.

Have I ever said that I don't like google????????

Home now and same results. Home page #1 but nothing else in the index. Rogue datacenter.

Dunno, google can just Kiss my...........

Too Funny!!

Steve, if you do a check on the data centre site I gave on this forum recently on your site at.....
http://www.123seotools.com/google/datacenters/saturation/

the results vary from 0 to 44 with very few noughts!
Hope this cheers you up a bit:-D

Your site checked I checked out was www.cambridgeohiorotary.org (http://www.cambridgeohiorotary.org)

[rotarysteve]

Steve, if you do a check on the data centre site I gave on this forum recently on your site at.....
http://www.123seotools.com/google/datacenters/saturation/

the results vary from 0 to 44 with very few noughts!
Hope this cheers you up a bit:-D

Your site checked I checked out was www.cambridgeohiorotary.org (http://www.cambridgeohiorotary.org)

Thanks for the links, actually checked out that link immediatly after I discovered there is only one page in the index. So, I can only figure that I must be hitting datacenters that are not included in 123seotools little checker program.

Actually, last evening this episode motivated me to go through several of my pages that I would like to get out of all of the seo's indexs and I placed a noindex meta for the robots. About 8 I think. So, that is a good thing I figure. I'll just sit back and see how google behaves. I'm not in a penalty, so time will tell.

I checked the sitemap function today and I'm back up to 9 pages on google and the 123seotools link shows me up a couple of pages on each of the centers they check "with no less than 32 pages/center. Heck, maybe google added a new datacenter in my area -or- they wiped me clean and the lost pages will get re-indexed. "hence the addition of the noindex meta's"

So, again I must be hitting a center that the 123seo's link is not looking at. Interesting study anyways........ It will also be interesting to see if MSN will drop the pages that I just added the noindex meta's to.

[rotarysteve]

Speak for yourself, Steve - as for me, they don't deserve such a privilege! :wink:

I'm just glad to know that it's nothing I did wrong, and I'm in good company. When checking the data today -


Lol, I guess I have been tooo kind with my reaction to google. :wink:

[Liz Y]

If you are getting enough hits to make it worthwhile, you might want to think about putting thumbnail images of the color versions on that page. Something on the order of "people who looked at this graphic also looked at..."
Uh, huh, that might help in that particular case, but it would be sort of like putting my finger on a leak while the Titanic is sinking. What I'm really hoping for is that either the problem resolves itself, which generally happens, for me at least, in the last/first days of any given month. Or, maybe for google to implode on it's big bloated self, :twisted:
...which would send everyone back to Yahoo.

Statistics are interesting - my daily average of Yahoo hits are definitely up this month, so maybe surfers are slowly catching on; in the meantime, if anyone is holding google stock, maybe it's time to take profits and run?

[jonra01]

Uh, huh, that might help in that particular case, but it would be sort of like putting my finger on a leak while the Titanic is sinking. What I'm really hoping for is that either the problem resolves itself, which generally happens, for me at least, in the last/first days of any given month. Or, maybe for google to implode on it's big bloated self, :twisted:
...which would send everyone back to Yahoo...
I wouldn't count on GOOG getting it straight this time. There are too many strange things going on. Their last upgrade wiped out many mom-and-pop business sites. The machine crisis that has already been mentioned is another serious problem. I suspect it has something to do with the pages that have recently been disappearing from the G index.

If you do a comparison of different domains using a tool, like this indexed page checker (http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/indexed-pages/), you will see that G almost always has the smallest number of pages in their index. On top of that, their over-agressive search engine spam campaign has caused many highly relevant sites to be pushed down in their serps.

I suspect a test of the relevancy of the serps for the different se's will show that G is coming in dead last. I also suspect that you will start to see reports of just such tests very soon. If what I suspect is true then users will begin to desert G in droves. The new IE browser with it's built in msn search might be the final nail in the coffin. No wonder G is crying about that.

Forums and blogs are the first places this kind of trend shows up. It won't be long before more articles appear in the MSM. The New York Times has been running quite a few articles about G lately. None of them are really favorable.

If they don't do something soon to turn this around they could lose their place as the #1 search engine. If that happens their advertising business will drop off considerably. That won't please the stockholders.

[rotarysteve]

I wouldn't count on GOOG getting it straight this time. There are too many strange things going on. Their last upgrade wiped out many mom-and-pop business sites. The machine crisis that has already been mentioned is another serious problem. I suspect it has something to do with the pages that have recently been disappearing from the G index.

If you do a comparison of different domains using a tool, like this indexed page checker (http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/indexed-pages/), you will see that G almost always has the smallest number of pages in their index. On top of that, their over-agressive search engine spam campaign has caused many highly relevant sites to be pushed down in their serps.


Though hating to call my site a mom and pop site, in essence it is a mom/pop.

I say this because these last couple of weeks I'm getting 200 pageloads per week. That is good for my local non-profit site. Had a short spell where I was averaging under 100 pageloads a week. My current "club" e-mail campaigns have paid off in doubling my activity. Actually, referrals from the forum have been somewhat competitive with the locals, about a month ago.

So, I would have to think that google would "as they attempt a fix", would drop the weaker sites first. So, I fit into the mom/pop analogy. From where I sit they dropped me like a hot potatoe.

As I check g sitemaps from home this evening, it matches what I saw from work today. G sitemaps has 9 pages in their index just like I found from work today. Just like yesterday, my work ISP had 1 page in the index and the home ISP showed 1 page in the index. Another interesting point is that the 9 pages listed are pages that had been getting hits through google prior to this fundamental change.

Though the 123 seotools link is amusing and has stroked my ego, they're not hitting on the centers I am hitting on. There is no reasonable logic behind these differences. At least compared to reality.

As for the SEO's in the whole..... MSN and Yahoo both have been very consistant. Google has from early on has been quite "flakey".

From early on, out of a 80 "give/take" page site, I allowed 47 pages to be indexed. MSN is right on with 47 pages, Yahoo only has 16 pages.

Google mind you had over 70 pages in their index. I've seen 3 copies of the same page/url in google's index. They even indexed .doc and .xls files. It is probably this rampant indexing from google that got them into trouble in the first place.

So, actually not even sure where I'm heading with my experiences with google. I've been hoping for google to drop some of the pages that where old/dead and outdated. Sure seems to of happened. If my percieved reality comes true, then I'm in the top chair.

Just shows that when google highly ranks a page with very generic search terms, as opposed to other seo's who did not. Or google indexs close to twice what should be as opposed to msn who have it right, or yahoo who always fell short. Well, still not sure what I'm talking about, so I'll rampage further another day.

Just too funny

also time to bail as thunder approaches, and the cat is freaking out, she is a tad bit ticked.

[Liz Y]

Though hating to call my site a mom and pop site, in essence it is a mom/pop.

So, I would have to think that google would "as they attempt a fix", would drop the weaker sites first. So, I fit into the mom/pop analogy. From where I sit they dropped me like a hot potatoe.
If by "weak" you mean number of hits - no, I don't think so!
Even Google isn't that dumb...yet. If that were so, we could all play that game - but I think that for SEs, hit-counting went out of fashion about 6 years ago, so hang in there... (and this is one mother they won't shut down -I don't have their overhead, so I can wait...)

If they don't do something soon to turn this around they could lose their place as the #1 search engine. If that happens their advertising business will drop off considerably. That won't please the stockholders.
I never did trust GOOG enough to trade in it (although I wish I had done a get-in get-out a few months ago, hindsite is easy). I always felt that a lot of the gains were froth... dotcom boom/bust redux, and when they started offering everything but a live-in maid, my eyebrows went up...

Maybe it's time to trade some YHOO again, though... I was averaging about 10 hits a day from them before all this; this month, 43 a day. :)

[rotarysteve]

well, holding firm at 9 pages......... Finally took a peek at what the cached versions of the pages where. Most are cached versions from January 6th this year.

So, as I pondered this... a buddy stopped by. I've provided a picture of the episode once he noticed I had google on the screen. Good thing I had another monitor................. lol






http://www.cambridgeohiorotary.org/041207_snibbe.jpg

[4th Ave]

Statistics are interesting - my daily average of Yahoo hits are definitely up this month, so maybe surfers are slowly catching on; in the meantime, if anyone is holding google stock, maybe it's time to take profits and run?


I have always had MSN referrals as number 1, with Google referring about half to 3/4 the amount of msn referrals. Yahoo stayed away for a long time, but started creeping up last month. This month, MSN continues to refer the most, but Yahoo is easily number 2, and Google is much, much lower in referrals. It's interesting that you find your Yahoo traffic up, too.

Maybe I'm hallucinating, but it seems to me like my Google searches for all kinds of things aren't resulting in the specific results I used to get with them. Yahoo is my default, but I preferred Google for searches because I didn't have to skip over sponsored (and usually less accurate) results. Lately, though, the Google searches have been less likely to produce what I've been looking for.

I agree with JWJ in another related thread that searchers have to be going somewhere--but I wonder if anyone else is getting where they want to go--or just landing places.