Best Way to Count Pages in the Main Index

Use Webmaster Tools internal links

[Halfdeck]

Tell me if I'm wrong, but considering that webmaster tools link pages ignore supplemental results, by counting urls listed in Webmaster Toos/ Links / internal links you can get a dead on count of urls in the main index.

[tedster]

I'm not sure there's any way to get a dead-on count. Webmaster Tools reporting gets buggy, as do the site: operator results.

I've noticed that the original number of results given by the site: operator as you go into deeper results pages sometimes changes from "about 3,000" to a number without the word "about". That number, when I see it, is the one I think is best, but I still don't assume it's dead-on.