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Thanks Jordan and Eric for your input. In the meantime I've gotten a response from JohnMu in the Webmaster Central Help Forum. Apparently it has to do with duplicate content on our website: "We're taking some of these duplicates, and folding them into a single URL." https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/webmasters/ezMvrlRWuDk/q0jjp9bHDgAJ

A noindexed page can still accumulate and pass link equity, although results vary on whether or not some of that link juice "evaporates" along the way. I'm inclined to agree with Chris, though, that there's probably no need to noindex a page that redirects to a page that you do want indexed.

But using sitemaps you will not be using this method? The return tag will be in a sitemap...

Hi, I always tell the clients, "play with Google's toys" she likes that! It's beneficial as time goes on and these become more and more valuable. I don't believe that less is more applies with Schema, it's growing and becoming more and more valuable to ease the index-ability, build relevance and to stand out above your competition. So, yes add breadcrumb schema, would be my opinion.

Hi Jochen, SUPER interesting find, thanks for pointing this out, Jochen. To me, this looks like Google understands that these two pages are the same page, except for different devices, and is using information on the desktop page to make their search results more robust for mobile. You can see the connection by looking for Google's cache of your mobile page. The best way to do this is to search in Google for "cache:[URL]". If you search for "cache:http://m.avogel.ch/de/ihre-gesundheit/erkaeltung/alles_ueber_erkaeltungen.php", Google will send you to the desktop version of the page. Here's my theory: Google has one index for both desktop and smartphone users, so it combines data and gives the user the best result possible. Google's doing more and more to try to improve its search results even without SEO intervention, so I'm not too surprised about this, but can't seem to find this in any SEO articles out there. In answer to your question: I recommend that you continue to keep you mobile and desktop sites similar enough that Google is pulling from both. In the past, some SEOs would build sites differently for mobile users, but I've never seen any UX studies that shows that that's a better approach. Given that Google strongly recommends that you use responsive web design, it's certainly not Google's recommended approach. I hope this helps? I'm not sure if this was a post because you were worried about something - this seems like good news to me! Kristina

Those discrepancies would not concern me, but there are some differences between all the things you list: Total indexed: 2,360 Search Console - this is likely a reasonably accurate list of the number of pages you have indexed in Google. You could use a tool like URL Profiler to check index status of specific URLs. About 2,920 results Google search "site:example.com" - site: search is less accurate and will likely return a different number each time you do it, even if it's just moments apart. Sitemap: 1,229 URLs: these are URLs you added to a sitemap because they are priority pages you want to make sure Google has indexed and hopefully ranked. You control this number. Screaming Frog Spider: 1,352 URLs - Screaming Frog is going to start on your homepage and crawl the site attempting to discover as many URLs as possible. If you are not linking to a page, SF won't be able to crawl it. Google on the other hand may have old pages, old URL structures or pages that were linked from an external website in their index and they won't forget them. A really important question is: how many pages do you have that you want to be indexed? Is Google's index bloated with pages that you want to keep out? Figure these things out, and then try to adjust your sitemaps, noindex, robots.txt as needed.

Thanks for the hint Dirk! I've used the tool and it works great. I even found a handy chrome extension ("WebMaster Tools - Bulk URL removal") that made the removal of my 3,000 subdirectories very smooth and saved me about 25 hours of manual work! WebMaster Tools - Bulk URL removal

Jochen, I can't say I've seen this particular issue, but you are right that it is odd. It sounds like you have everything set up technically correct, but Google WMT is crossing some wires. I wish I could provide you with more, but I wouldn't know any potential issues without being able to look at your whole setup in GoogleWMT. I recommend having a consultant take a look. Typically, I hate recommending that (because I'm a consultant and that looks shady), but there really is no other way to know if everything is set up right and Google is just on crack, but I think that's it.