Discrepency between # of pages and # of pages indexed
-
Here is some background:
- The site in question has approximately 10,000 pages and Google Webmaster shows that 10,000 urls(pages were submitted)
2) Only 5,500 pages appear in the Google index
3) Webmaster shows that approximately 200 pages could not be crawled for various reasons
4) SEOMOZ shows about 1,000 pages that have long URL's or Page Titles (which we are correcting)
5) No other errors are being reported in either Webmaster or SEO MOZ
6) This is a new site launched six weeks ago. Within two weeks of launching, Google had indexed all 10,000 pages and showed 9,800 in the index but over the last few weeks, the number of pages in the index kept dropping until it reached 5,500 where it has been stable for two weeks.
Any ideas of what the issue might be? Also, is there a way to download all of the pages that are being included in that index as this might help troubleshoot?
-
It's not exactly 3 clicks... if you're a PR 10 website it will take you quite a few clicks in before it gets "tired". Deep links are always a great idea.
-
I have also heard 3 clicks from a page with link juice. So if you have deep links to a page it can help carry pages deeper in. Do you agree?
-
Thank you to all for your advice. Good suggestions.
-
We do have different types of pages but Google is indexing all category pages but not all individual content pages. Based on the replies I have received, I suspect the issue can be helped by flattening the site architecture and links.
As an FYI, the site is a health care content site so no products are sold on the site. Revenue is from ads.
-
Great tip. I have seen this happen too (e.g. forum, blog, archive and content part of the website not indexed equally).
-
Do you have areas of your site that are distinctively different in type, such as category pages and individual item pages, or individual item pages and user submitted content?
What I'm getting at is trying to find if there's a certain type of page that Google isn't indexing. If you have distinct types of pages, you can create separate site maps (one for each type of content) and see if one type of content is being indexed better than another. It's more of a diagnostics tool that a solution, but I've found it helpful for sites of that size and larger in the past.
As other people have said, it's also a new site, so the lack of links could be hindering things as well.
-
Agreed!
-
Oh yes, Google is very big on balancing and allocation of resources. I don't think 10,000 will present a problem though as this number may be too common on ecommerce and content websites.
-
Very good advice in the replies. Everyone seems to have forgotten PageRank though. In Google's random surfer model it is assumed user will at some point abandon the website (after PageRank has been exhausted). This means if your site lacks raw link juice it may not have enough to go around through the whole site structure and it leaves some pages dry and unindexed. What can help is: Already mentioned flatter site architecture and unique content, but also direct links to pages not in index (including via social media) and more and stronger links towards home page which should ideally cascade down to the rest.
-
If you don't have many links to your site yet, I think that could reduce the number of pages that Google keeps in its main index. Google may allocate less resources to crawling your site if you have very little link juice, especially if deep pages on your site have no link juice coming in to them.
Another possibility is if some of the 10,000 pages are not unique content or duplicate content. Google could send a lot of your pages to its supplemental index if this is the case.
-
If you flatten out your site architecture a bit to where all pages are no more then 3 clicks deep, and provide a better HTML sitemap you will definitely see more pages indexed. It wont be all 10k, but it will be an improvement.
-
I appreciate the reply. The HTML site map does not show all 10,000 pages and some pages are likely more than 3 deep. I will try this and see what happens.
-
Google will not index your entire 10k page site just because you submitted the links in a site map. They will crawl your site and index many pages, but most likely you will never have your entire site indexed.
Cleaning up your crawl errors will help in getting your content indexed. A few other things you can do are:
-
provide a HTML sitemap on your website
-
ensure your site navigation is solid ( i.e. all pages are reachable, no island pages, the navigation can be seen in HMTL, etc)
-
ensure you do not have deep content. Google will often only go about 3 clicks deep. If you have buried content, it won't be indexed unless it is well linked.
-
if there are any particular pages you want to get indexed, you can link to them from your home page, or ask others to link to those pages from external sites.
-
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
-
Should you use google url remover if older indexed pages are still being kept?
Hello, A client recently did a redesign a few months ago, resulting in 700 pages being reduced to 60, mostly due to panda penalty and just low interest in products on those pages. Now google is still indexing a good number of them ( around 650 ) when we only have 70 on our sitemap. Thing is google indexes our site on average now for 115 urls when we only have 60 urls that need indexing and only 70 on our sitemap. I would of thought these urls would be crawled and not found, but is taking a very long period of time. Our rankings haven't recovered as much as we'd hope, and we believe that the indexed older pages are causes this. Would you agree and also would you think removing those old urls via the remover tool would be best option? It would mean using the url remover tool for 650 pages. Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
What would cause a sudden drop in indexed sitemap pages?
I have made no changes to my site for awhile and on 7/14 I had a 20% drop in indexed pages from the sitemap. However my total indexed pages has stayed the same. What would cause that?
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Should I deindex my pages?
I recently changed the URLs on a website to make them tidier and easier to follow. I put 301s in place to direct all the previous page names to the new ones. However, I didn't read moz's guide which says I should leave the old sitemap online for a few weeks afterwards. As I result, webmaster tools is showing duplicate page titles (which means duplicate pages) for the old versions of the pages I have renamed. Since the old versions are no longer on the sitemap, google can no longer access them to find the 301s I have put in place. Is this a problem that will fix itself over time or is there a way to quicken up the process? I could use webmaster tools to remove these old urls, but I'm not sure if this is recommended. Alternatively, I could try and recreate the old sitemap, but this would take a lot of time.
Technical SEO | | maxweb0 -
From page 1th to page 18th @ Google
Hello Mozzers! I have a question, you may help.. How may it be possible that a page ranking well (1th result) goes from 1th result to the 18th page just in 1 day? It doesnt seem to be any kind of penalization.. I now had all suspicious outgoing links to be nofollow (they were not before), this may be a cause .. (?) Do you have any other suggestion? Thanks
Technical SEO | | socialengaged0 -
Can up a page
I do my best to optimize the on-page parameters for my page www.lkeria.com/AADL-logement-Algerie.php for the kw "aadl" but i can't understand what Ii'm doing wrong (i desapear 2 mounths ago). The page is optimize (title, description, h1, h2 etc.) few links with different ancers, but google put a spamy site www[dot]aadl[dot]biz in top 3 ratheer my page. Can you give me some advice to fix this issue? What I am doing wrong? Tanks in advance
Technical SEO | | lkeria0 -
How to change noindex to index?
Hey, I've recently upgraded to a pro SEOmoz account and have realised i have 14574 issues to do with 'blocked by meta-robot' and that 'This page is being kept out of the search engine indexes by the meta tag , which may have a value of "noindex", keeping this page out of the index.' How can i change this so my pages get indexed? I read somewhere that i need to change my privacy settings but that thread was 3 years old and now the WP Dashboard has updated.. Please let me know Many thanks, Jamie P.s Im using WordPress 3.5 And i have the XML sitemap plugin And i have no idea where to look for this robots.txt file..
Technical SEO | | markgreggs0 -
Top pages give " page not found"
A lot of my top pages point to images in a gallery on my site. When I click on the url under the name of the jpg file I get an error page not found. For instance this link: http://www.fastingfotografie.nl/architectuur-landschap/single-gallery/10162327 Is this a problem? Thanks. Thomas. JkLej.png
Technical SEO | | thomasfasting0 -
404 - page authority?
If in open site explorer my 404 pages have a higer page authority - what benefit would i see in rankings if I 301 redirected those pages to the right page. For example www.site.com/widget is a 404 but has authority according to open site explorer - but the page i see in the serps is www.site.com/widget/ with the / at the end. so what benefit would i see in rankings if I 301 redirected those pages to the right page?
Technical SEO | | DavidS-2820610