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 I "no-index" two exact pages on Google results?
Hello everyone, I recently started a new wordpress website and created a static homepage. I noticed that on Google search results, there are two different URLs landing on same content page. I've attached an image to explain what I saw. Should I "no-index" the page url? Google url.JPG In this picture, the first result is the homepage and I try to rank for that page. The last result is landing on same content with different URL. So, should I no-index last result as shown in image?
Technical SEO | | amanda59640 -
Big page of clients - links to individual client pages with light content - not sure if canonical or no-follow - HELP
Not sure what best practice here is: http://www.5wpr.com/clients/ Is this is a situation where I'm best off adding canonical tags back to the main clients page, or to the practice area each client falls under? No-following all these links and adding canonical? No-follow/No-index all client pages? need some advice here...
Technical SEO | | simplycary0 -
Indexing Issue
Hi, I am working on www.stjohnswaydentalpractice.co.uk Google only seems to be indexing two of the pages when i search site:www.stjohnswaydentalpractice.co.uk I have added the site to webmaster tools and created a new sitemap which is showing that it has only submitted two of the pages. Can anyone shed any light for why these pages are not being indexed? Thanks Faye
Technical SEO | | dentaldesign0 -
Web page is showing up on Google but doesn't show when it was cached, so is it indexed?
Hey everyone So I created a new page on a WordPress website, it was live for a few hours till I changed my mind & switched it back to a draft. Just out of curiosity I did the Site:www.example.com/Example search on Google to see if it had been indexed & apparently it had but when I click on cached to see what time it got indexed at exactly it's showing me an error. So does this mean it is indexed or not?
Technical SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Duplicate content issue index.html vs non index.html
Hi I have an issue. In my client's profile, I found that the "index.html" are mostly authoritative than non "index.html", and I found that www. version is more authoritative than non www. The problem is that I find the opposite situation where non "index.html" are more authoritative than "index.html" or non www more authoritative than www. My logic would tell me to still redirect the non"index.html" to "index.html". Am I right? and in the case I find the opposite happening, does it matter if I still redirect the non"index.html" to "index.html"? The same question for www vs non www versions? Thank you
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Does page speed affect what pages are in the index?
We have around 1.3m total pages, Google currently crawls on average 87k a day and our average page load is 1.7 seconds. Out of those 1.3m pages(1.2m being "spun up") google has only indexed around 368k and our SEO person is telling us that if we speed up the pages they will crawl the pages more and thus will index more of them. I personally don't believe this. At 87k pages a day Google has crawled our entire site in 2 weeks so they should have all of our pages in their DB by now and I think they are not index because they are poorly generated pages and it has nothing to do with the speed of the pages. Am I correct? Would speeding up the pages make Google crawl them faster and thus get more pages indexed?
Technical SEO | | upper2bits0 -
Too many on page links for WP blog page
Hello, I have set my WP blog to a page so new posts go to that page making it the blog. On a SEOmoz campaign crawl, it says there are too many links on one page, so does this mean that as I am posting my blog posts to this page, the search engines are seeing the page as one page with links instead of the blog posts? I worry that if I continue to add more posts (which obviously I want to) the links will increase more and more, meaning that they will be discounted due to too many links. What can I do to rectify this? Many thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | mozUser14692366292850 -
How do https pages affect indexing?
Our site involves e-commerce transactions that we want users to be able to complete via javascript popup/overlay boxes. in order to make the credit card form secure, we need the referring page to be secure, so we are considering making the entire site secure so all of our site links wiould be https. (PayPal works this way.) Do you think this will negatively impact whether Google and other search engines are able to index our pages?
Technical SEO | | seozeelot0