Google counts pages I dont have

[atlrus]

Google has been messing with my webiste for quite a while now, but today I saw something for which I have no explanation, and I would greatly appreciate any help or suggestions.

Here is the deal:

When I search using site:www.mydonmain.com, Google shows over 9,500 pages, but my website has only 5,500+ pages. I dont have the time or the nerves to go through all of the results returned, but 4,000 pages were made up, I guess, because I just don't have that many.

And something else, when I search like this: site:www.mydomain.com "+www.mydomain.+com" I get almost 11,500 pages.

Somabody please help :)

<snip>

Thanks

[edited by: Marcia at 1:24 am (utc) on May 26, 2004]
[edit reason] No direct appeals to individuals, please. [/edit]

[atlrus]

and it keeps doing it

[Chico_Loco]

Alright, I'll bite.

Do you have any scripts in operation on the site, or it is all static HTML pages?

I would guess that you must have some script or database driven stuff with 5000+ pages, so with that in mind, do you have any other pages that are linked to from each of those pages that would be specific to the original page.

For example, if you have 5000 products in a database, and each product has a printer friendly page or something, then the page count will effectively double, even though it's the same item, just a different version.

There is probably something you've missed, because I don't think it would be as far out by more than 50%.

Are you a CJ or other affiliate program advertiser - if so, each inbound link probably has it's own query string, which to Google is considered another page.

Also - how about PDF (or other non HTML) files - those count too!

[otech]

Hey there,

I got the SAME THING!

Today, we have site:**** showing 1750 pages for site that has nowhere near that many (about half).

But guess what; URL ONLY LISTINGS are now showing up twice, once with a freshbot tag showing title etc, and the other just beneath.

try finding a url only listing and searching the url, like this one and you will see to results for the same url.

Try searching "snip"

if i was not allowed to post that then please let me know or just delete it for me...

[edited by: vitaplease at 8:07 am (utc) on May 27, 2004]
[edit reason] no specifics please [/edit]

[atlrus]

I have no scripts on my page, I have always tried to avoid anything by HTML on all of my websites as long as possible.

All of my pages are straight HTML, infact they are articles on topics related to the product I advertise.

And I am no CJ aff., but I do use affiliate links on my pages - all of them are to the same three websites and with the same code, plus the websites I link to do not mention my website anywhere.

It's just weird.

[walkman]

well, why do you even care?
are all your existing pages listed? If so, why worry about how Google counts...

[atlrus]

because it's not right - if it's out of the ordinary google behavor - something' wrong.

[kaled]

Do your urls finish folder/ or folder/file.html

Google seems to be in the habit of creating an url-only entry for .../folder and a full entry for .../folder/

Kaled.

[Stefan]

You might have your site, and its internal pages, listed with both www.example.org and example.org.

G will list pages with both versions, i.e. www.example.org/example_page.htm and example.org/example_page.htm.

You might have 4000 pages listed with two versions.

If your server is Apache, you can stick some code in the .htaccess to steer G to only one version.

(Note that site:www.example.org and site:example.org will both return the same thing... the way it works for us, anyway)

[otech]

nope, definately not in my case...

it is an IDENTICAL url... my site is in my profile if you want to check them out...

[ogletree]

You could not check it out if you wanted to. Google will only show 1000 results most of the time less.

[otech]

my site only has about 1500 pages (500 or so are NOINDEX), and it had two listings for about 400 more, which have now gone.

If i typed the url of a page ie ****xx.xxx then i got 2 listings for the file, one with a title and description, and one a url only listing.

They are gone now anyway so yeah, you cant see them...doh..

[atlrus]

And the number of pages on my website keeps growing, although I havent added anything.

There is nothing from out of the ordinary about my website design.

I have about 5,000 pages. And here is what it shows today when I use different commands:

site:wwWebmasterWorldebsite.com "+wwWebmasterWorldebsite.+com/" - 12,900 returned results.

site:wwWebmasterWorldebsite.com - 9,300 returned results.

"+wwWebmasterWorldebsite.+com/" - 8,900 returned results.

My entire website is HTML, no scripting, nothing special or out of the ordinary.
When I used www3. or www2. on google, all the reults I mentioned above are increased by almost 1,000.
Weird.

[claus]

<estimatedTotalResultsCount> - The estimated total number of results that exist for the query. Note: The estimated number may be either higher or lower than the actual number of results that exist.

[google.com...]