Is Google Webmaster Tools Index Status Completely Correct?

[mytouchoftech]

So I was thrilled when Webmaster tools released the little graph telling you how many pages are indexed.  However, I noticed with one of my sites, that it was actually going down over the past year.  I've only been doing the SEO on the site for a few months, so it wasn't anything I did.

The chart is attached to this post.

Now here's the funny part.  I haven't really noticed anything out of the ordinary for keyword ranking dropping off.   I also tested my most recent page that I put up.  3 days after I posted it, I could find it in a Google search.  Shouldn't this mean that's it's indexed?  I can also find any other page I've posted in the last few months.

Another oddity is that I submitted a sitemap a while ago when the site was only 22 pages.  The sitemap index count says 20 of those pages are indexed.

The chart only says that there are 3 indexed pages right now.  However, I can clearly find dozens of pages in Google searches.  Is there something I'm missing?  Is my chart for this website broken?  Should I report this to Google?  Has anyone had a similar issue?

decreaseIndex.png

[mytouchoftech]

Thanks for letting me know that I'm not the only one seeing this.  In Analytics, I've got a nice upward line of traffic, so as you said, I'm not too worried about it.  Maybe someone else will have more knowledge about the graph itself.

[Matthew_Edgar]

Hey Andrew,

Yeah, I've seen the same kinds of issues where that seems to be somewhat inexact. So far, I've not been able to find an explanation. In terms of the large drop off, I did see a similar drop off on one of my sites shortly after correcting a duplicate content issue.

However, like you said, you need to watch for things out of the ordinary. For now, I'm not worrying too much about the graph. It is interesting, but I'll pay more attention to the graph in Google Analytics telling me how much traffic I have from Google. If I see a large drop there, then I'll worry.

Matthew