Comments on: How Inaccurate Google’s SITE: Operator Is and How to Fix It

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:17:23 +0000

It’s also amazing how different the results are at Yahoo and Bing for the site: operator command.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:12:33 +0000

Regular Google: 1,300
Datacenters: 30,100

Wow! What a difference.

By: Fred

Fred — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:54:35 +0000

site:buyandwalk.com

Regular Google: 4,080
All Datacenters: 135,000
Webmaster Tools: 3,945

Huge difference !!!

By: Kevin Pike

Kevin Pike — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:52:49 +0000

When I do a Site: search I always navigate to the end to see what the “REAL” number is.

It’s so annoying that the first pages of Google might say 163 pages are indexed but when you click on page 17 you redirected to page 14 and REALLY only 143 pages are indexed.

WHY CAN’T GOOGLE JUST FIX THIS?!?

By: Roland

Roland — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:08:15 +0000

The number shown in Google is just a estimate from Google. Based on the number of indexed pages Google estimates the total number of pages of your site. If you want to see the real number of indexed pages: browse to the last page with search results (and click ‘repeat the search with the omitted results included’ at the bottom of the page if you see this line). You will now see the real number of pages in the index.

This only works for small sites, because for large sites it is not possible to browse all result pages. Google only lets you browse the first 1000 indexed pages.

By: Tinu

Tinu — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:21:46 +0000

I always make sure to use: site:thesite.com and site:www. Thesite.com. I also agree with Mike re: fallflurries It’s just that time of year. When you think about what the operator is supposed to be reflecting according to Google it makes sense. Google’s reality is always in flux.

By: Derek Clark

Derek Clark — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:08:53 +0000

“I think the datacenters hold all the data and that data gets filtered down to regular google. ” – definitely.

Google samples data when serving results, especially when your query requires additional segmentation (ie, one slice for “keyword”, second slice for “site:site.com”). I’ve noticed that including different portions of my URL in competing “site” queries is sometimes necessary to shake out a URL I am looking for, even though the other variations I tried should’ve returned it, too.

With clients I always use “estimates” when using Google stats, and “reports” when using Webmaster Tools.

I think it’s also important for Google to protect their data by sprinkling in slight variance in results. Static data sets could be reverse engineered, in theory.

By: IrishWonder

IrishWonder — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:14:08 +0000

I guess the data can be more precise for smaller sites. I checked two and got either exact same or very close results:

site:irishwonder.com
Regular Google: 107
Datacenters: all 106

site:dirguide.info
Regular Google: 9
Datacenters: all 9

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:29:06 +0000

What people are seeing right now appears to be Google’s normal Fall Flurries, where many pages seem to be dumped (temporarily) from the index. This has happened every fall since at least 2003, if not earlier.

Whether it happens for the same reason each year as in previous years is a matter of speculation. I suspect the pattern is due more to a collision of random factors and timing of Google production schedules.

The situation usually begins in October and rights itself by mid-December or early January. I have never seen Google try to explain the phenomenon. I’m not even sure if they have acknowledged it.

By: JuiceeLinks

JuiceeLinks — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:22:28 +0000

A customers website had the following:

Regular Google: 169
Webmasters Tools Indexed Pages: 106
Datacenters: 169 to 194