URLs indexed Vs Submitted

[StickyRiceSEO]

When we log into our Google Webmaster Tools dashboard, we have noticed that where it says URLs indexed - every week that number has been going down by over 20K while the submitted number has stayed roughly the same.

Any idea what this means? Anyone?

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Check out Google's resource on indexing, they say:

Sometimes the data we show in Index Status is not fully reflected in Google Search results. In some cases, Google may apply filters while building search results, and these filters can affect which results are shown in search. Filters include removal of pages due to legal reasons or by webmaster request, results from websites that we think are currently unavailable ("down"), and results removed due to manual spam action.

Since these filters are usually applied due to temporary urgent issues, or are requested by mistake, Google may in some cases retain the pages in our index for a period of time to help websites recover quickly after the issue is fixed (for example, after the site becomes available again).
To get a more fuller picture of your site's indexing status, do a "site:yourdomain.com" and that should give you more perspective on what's happening with your status.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[StickyRiceSEO]

Thanks Patrick.

My biggest concern is that if this number keeps going down - does this mean that our overall quality is going down and so they are indexing less pages?

The issue is that beginning of the year I was over 60% of the overall number submitted and now down to 25+%.

Also when I go to Index Status - the graph is fairly straight over the last 6 months.

What is your take on that?

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I would check your meta tags and robots.txt to make sure pages aren't accidentally blocking crawlers.

I would also check make sure your organic traffic isn't going down as well, especially to pages that you are seeing aren't being indexed anymore.

Lastly, I would check Google's algorithm history, and see if any of your index / traffic drops correlate with changes in the SERPs. That can give you insight if you need to do a content audit or backlink audit. Also, make sure your sitemap and internal links are up to date.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[StickyRiceSEO]

Thanks Patrick. Appreciate your help!

Still would be curious to know what that number means exactly. I can do the research but still a little vague on that number.

[Linda-Vassily]

The number of indexed pages is going down by 20,000+ pages a month? That is a lot of pages. How big is your site?

The URLs indexed is the number of URLs in Google's index. Google will not index pages that it finds to be very similar to other pages on the site (ie duplicate content), could this be the case for you?

I am also not clear on what you mean by the index status being straight when the number of URLs indexed is going down by 20,000 a month. Could you post a screenshot of what you are looking at?

[StickyRiceSEO]

On the dashboard I have over 500K URLs submitted. Number of URL's indexed has now dropped to 50K but yet when I go to: Google Index - > Index Status I am up to 600+K.

We have some duplicate information but everything is canonicalized accordingly.

As to where I am looking - When you first log into WMT and click on your site - "Dashboard" section.

Any ideas anyone?

Would be nice if Google could just have a question icon next to certain data to clearly define what the information means - whether your an expert or a newb.

[StickyRiceSEO]

Anyone?