How does it work?

site:site.com -blablabla

[pashenG]

Hi.

Couple days ago I checked how many my pages are indexed by google.
I did query:

site:site.com -aaaaa
I got number. Next I did:

site:site.com -aaaaaa
I got LOWER number. Strange. Next query

site:site.com -aaaaaaa
I got even lower number. And last.

site:site.com -aaaaaaaa
I got bigger number.

Of course I'm 100% sure than on my site aren't any page with aaaaa. (site:site.com aaaaa returns 0).

I've not idea how "-" query works but works strange.

Regards
pasheng

[kaled]

The most likely explanation is that each query was directed to a different data center and each data center has a different number of your pages indexed.

Assuming that yours is a new site, large variations may be normal. It will stabilise over time.

Kaled.

[ThomasB]

The different DC theory might be right. But my guess is that it's some kind of a bug which was spotted earlier, though I can't find it anymore.

It's more likely imho that the number of results of "site:domain.com -sfdf" is just guess. It would be almost impossible to have real numbers calculated within milliseconds so what you see is just a guess of Google.

[koiok]

Google guesses number of indexed pages. Google doesn't know the number exactly. Therefore you are getting a different numbers.

[pashenG]

I checked it not only on my site but on couple of others. All sites checked by me are "old" sites (including my).

Theory with different datacenters maybe is correct but when I submit the same query with "-" I receive the same results. I will have to be switched to different datacenters based on query. But it's rather impossible.

I discovered that query with 8 or more chars after "-" returns stable pages number.

Regards.
pasheng