Indexing Issues

[Hartoonian]

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[JaneCopland]

Hi there,

Do the ~1300 pages that are not indexed consist of unique, otherwise useful content? If you're populating a sitemap with too much super-thin content, duplicates, etc. you can expect those not to be indexed. Google will use the sitemap as exactly what it is - a guide. If it can't find useful content on the actual website after following that guide, the pages won't be indexed.

[WebServiceConsulting.com]

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[Hartoonian]

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[JaneCopland]

Hi Patrick,

Interestingly, I do get those pages as indexed:

http://i.imgur.com/mtmu9UM.png

http://i.imgur.com/XarSYAI.png

Regardless, doing a site: search for a URL is not as accurate as looking at the results of an submitted sitemap, but I get 380 indexed results: http://i.imgur.com/WnfQK9J.png so clearly a lot lower than the total number submitted.

One of the reasons that competitor probably has a slightly easier time having poor-quality or thin pages indexed is because of the relative strength of both domains. Mandy.com has a domain authority of 64 to Icrewz.com's 27. This is a pretty big discrepancy and can allow the more authoritative site to "get away" with a little bit more. Mandy.com's metrics are overall a lot higher, with the exception of Twitter:

http://i.imgur.com/nK4py6C.png

http://i.imgur.com/KSePgVq.png

I'd say to your client that a good question is whether the indexation of those pages is actually going to help bring in traffic. What queries "should" they rank for? Or would filling Google's index with useless pages place the site at risk of attracting unwanted Panda attention due to having an unbalanced ratio of content-heavy to thin pages?

[Hartoonian]

Hi Jane,

Thanks for your input, your opinion is highly appreciated.

You mentioned how doing a site: search isn't accurate, but rather the results of a submitted sitemap I'm assuming via Webmasters. We're not able to see specifically which URLs Google chose to place in the index and which they didn't, am I right? They simply show you the number of URLs submitted and the number that are indexed.

Regarding Mandy's higher authority, that does make a lot of sense.

I absolutely concur with your questions, and to a degree I have established that stance. I need to remain consistent so that the client can better understand the reasoning behind my concerns.

Thanks for your help!