Why is there a difference in the number of indexed pages shown by GWT and site: search?

[aleker]

Hi Moz Fans,

I have noticed that there is a huge difference between the number of indexed pages of my site shown via site: search and the one that shows Webmaster Tools.

While searching for my site directly in the browser (site:), there are about 435,000 results coming up. According to GWT there are over 2.000.000

My question is: Why is there such a huge difference and which source is correct?

We have launched the site about 3 months ago, there are over 5 million urls within the site and we get lots of organic traffic from the very beginning.

Hope you can help!

Thanks!

Aleksandra

[Linda-Vassily]

The site operator is a sample of results from your site—WMT has the better information.

"You can use special searches to see sample results that indicate how your site is indexed by Google."

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35256

[eyepaq]

What's the URL of the site ?

[aleker]

Hi,

Linda, what suprises me is that the difference is so brutal... and before this number was higher.

The URL is infoempresa.com, it´s a Spanish site.

Thanks again!

Aleks