Strange results with site:

Any idea why this is happening happening?

[Boaz]

When I do a query in Google for "site:www.example.com" , I get a number, let's say 1 million pages.
Now I do a query for "example site:www.example.com", I get a lower number, let's say 800K pages.
Okay - that supposedly means that the word "example" is not in all of that site's pages.
But - when I do the query "site:www.example.com -example", I get zero pages.

How come?

[Powdork]

I don't know. I just tried it with my site and
....site:www.example.com example
+.site:www.example.com -example
______________________________
...............site:www.example.com

That is supposed to represent addition:)

[Boaz]

Thanks Powdork. hmmm... I have some very commonly known sites as examples of this not working, but as no specific examples are allowed here (though possibly these sites may be an exception), I'll sticky you.

[Boaz]

Okay, got confirmation from Powdork that he sees the same thing and that it probably shouldn't be a problem in this case to name some examples, so here goes - try this with any big site, such as Amazon:

site:www.amazon.com 3,240,000
site:www.amazon.com amazon 1,960,000
site:www.amazon.com -amazon 0

Any idea? You can see the same even with WebmasterWorld... (Powdork checked) :)

[gpmgroup]

site:www.example.com -"expression" sometimes returns pages which do have the "expression" words on them.

[Powdork]

It's ok to
crosslink heavily
use hidden text
cloak
buy pr
sell pr
fence stolen pr
copy others' sites

There, now we can do all those things too?;)

I'm just a guy with a keyboard.

[your_store]

fence stolen pr

Thanks for that one Powdork. The best tip I've read all day ;)

[Powdork]

site:www.webmasterworld.com 103,000 results
site:www.webmasterworld.com webmasterworld 190,000 results

[Abdelrhman Fahmy]

(site:www.amazon.com ) you're searching for a white space at amazon.com

(site:www.amazon.com amazon) you're searching for the keyword amazon at amazon.com

(site:www.amazon.com -amazon) you're not searching for any thing at amazon.com

As I could see you're searching for a three different keywords ,so of course you should get a three different results. ;)

[Boaz]

Thanks, but I don't think that's it. Let's put back quote marks around the searches (even though the searches are done without quote marks) so no one will think there is a search for a white space going on. Also, "(site:www.amazon.com -amazon) you're not searching for any thing at amazon.com" I think you're wrong there, in this case I'm searching for all pages in the site that don't contain the keyword amazon.

"site:www.amazon.com" 3,120,000
"site:www.amazon.com -amazon" 0
"site:www.amazon.com +amazon" 1,860,000

As far as my understanding goes (which of course may be flawed), the last search should have either shown in this case 3,120,000 or the second search shouldn't have been 0.

[gpmgroup]

site:www.amazon.com 3,240,000
site:www.amazon.com amazon 1,960,000

Shows there are details of Amazon pages inside Google that are partially indexed i.e. indexed but have no description.

site:www.webmasterworld.com 103,000 results
site:www.webmasterworld.com webmasterworld 190,000 results

Shows every page held by Google of Webmasterworld is fully indexed and there are more than one occurrence of the word "webmasterworld" on some of those pages.

[Boaz]

Thanks, what you say makes sense to me - up to a point.

Regarding Amazon, if I understand correctly, this is what you're saying:

"site:www.amazon.com" shows the number of pages Google found for Amazon, including those without title and description (where Google only knows they exist but hasn't really fully indexed them)

"site:www.amazon.com amazon" shows the number of pages from Amazon where Google has found the word "amazon", from among the pages that it has fully indexed.

Okay, but why then do I get for "site:www.amazon.com -sfdsfdsfdff" 3,260,000?

I'd think that if when looking for keywords the check was only on the fully indexed pages, the numbers for the last one shouldn't have been 3,260,000, , and instead should have been in the vicinity of 1,960,000?

[Powdork]

Shows every page held by Google of Webmasterworld is fully indexed and there are more than one occurrence of the word "webmasterworld" on some of those pages.

No it doesn't.

[gpmgroup]

Okay, but why then do I get for "site:www.amazon.com -sfdsfdsfdff" 3,260,000?

I'd think that if when looking for keywords the check was only on the fully indexed pages, the numbers for the last one shouldn't have been 3,260,000, , and instead should have been in the vicinity of 1,960,000?

-sfdsfdsfddff doesn't appear on 'any pages' whether fully indexed or partially indexed so I guess 3,260,000 refelects this.

Originally it wasn't possible to do a site:www.example.com only a site:www.example.com -asdfasdfscribble

A lot of people were using -scribble and I think Google tidied it up about this time last year by allowing the command syntax without the -scribble to work.