Does Google index internal anchors as separate pages?

[netzkern_AG]

Hi,

Back in September, I added a function that sets an anchor on each subheading (h[2-6]) and creates a Table of content that links to each of those anchors. These anchors did show up in the SERPs as JumpTo Links. Fine.

Back then I also changed the canonicals to a slightly different structur and meanwhile there was some massive increase in the number of indexed pages - WAY over the top - which has since been fixed by removing (410) a complete section of the site. However ... there are still ~34.000 pages indexed to what really are more like 4.000 plus (all properly canonicalised). Naturally I am wondering, what google thinks it is indexing. The number is just way of and quite inexplainable.

So I was wondering:

Does Google save JumpTo links as unique pages?

Also, does anybody know any method of actually getting all the pages in the google index? (Not actually existing sites via Screaming Frog etc, but actual pages in the index - all methods I found sadly do not work.)

Finally: Does somebody have any other explanation for the incongruency in indexed vs. actual pages?

Thanks for your replies!

Nico

[rjonesx. 0]

1. The anchor pages aren't going to be indexed separately. If you are lucky, you might get a rich snippet from them in the SERPs, which would be nice. You can see an example of this if you search Google for "broken link building" and look at the top position.

2. Google likely has a crawl budget for sites based on a number of factors - inbound links, content uniqueness, etc. Your best bet is to make sure you have a strong link architecture, a complete and updated sitemap,  and a good link profile.

3. Google can't index the whole web, nor would they want to. They just want to index pages that have a strong likelihood of ranking so they can build the best possible search engine.

[EGOL]

I agree with Russ that the anchors are not going to be indexed separately.... but I believe that those anchors are kickass page optimization that is second only behind the title tag.  More info here.

[netzkern_AG]

Thanks - so I have to continue the search for where a tenfold increase in indexed pages (according to Search Console) might possibly come from. Sadly, the rest of your reply misses my problem; probably I have been unclear.

The reason I was asking for a method to know what pages ARE indexed is: I seem to have no problem getting stuff indexed (crystal-clear sitemap with dates; clear link structure &c.) but google seems over-eager and indexes more than there really is. If it is some technical problem, I'd like to fix that - but Google does not show anywhere what pages are actually indexed. There are lots of methods around - but none that I found do work as of now.

I have been well aware of JumpTo-Links, as I stated, and it works nicely. No problem at all with "not enough" indexed pages - really rather the opposite with no idea what causes it.

Regards

Nico