Changes in Google "Site:" Search Algorithm Over Time?

[OrionGroup]

I was wondering if anyone has noticed changes in how Google returns 'site:' searches over the past few years or months.

I remember being able to do a search such as "site:example.com" and Google would return a list of webpages where the order may have shown the higher page rank pages (due to link building, etc) first and/or parent category pages higher up in the list of the first page (if relevant) first (as they could have higher PR naturally, anyways).

It seems that these days I can hardly find quality / target pages that have higher page rank on the first page of Google's site: search results. Is this just me... or has Google perhaps purposely scrambled the SERPS somewhat for site: searches to not give away their page ranking secrets?

[AnythingDigital]

Hey Scott!

I had the same problem:

http://searchengineland.com/site-command-limited-to-30-results-google-says-a-temporary-domain-clustering-bug-160594

Hope this helps!

Jess

[OrionGroup]

Hi Jess,

That doesn't seem to be my exact issue.  I was just wondering about an overall, permanent algo change affecting 'site:' search.

Though we have not received any GWT notices, I'm trying to figure out if Google may be penalizing / lowering the ranking order / omitting ... for whatever reason... some pages we've previously targeted with link building.  Because when I do a site: search, I'd expect to see the more authoritative pages of a website closer to the top of the first page of SERPS.

Russ