site: numbers do not line up with the Sitemaps number

[mike73]

When I use Google Webmaster Tools, site:www.mysite.com tells me 189K pages are indexed. But when I go to the Sitemaps info, it says:

Total URLs: 368504
Indexed URLs: 0

How can this be, when all of the 189K indexed pages are also in my sitemap?

[tedster]

...all of the 189K indexed pages are also in my sitemap

That lines up as far as I can see. Your sitemap number (368K) is nearly twice as high as the site: operator number (189K).

I'm never surpised when Webmaster Tools information seems peculiar in some way - it happens a lot. Also note that site:example.com results are getting weirder and weirder, often omitting urls that definitely are in the index - sometimes with a simple site:example.com/directory/ query.

How many pages do you think your website has? Does that line up with either of the two numbers Google reports?

[mike73]

Sorry, I wasn't clear about where I am confused.

Total URLs is accurate. There are 368,504 URLs in my sitemap. What I find weird is that Indexed URLs is ZERO. Shouldn't Indexed URLs be 189K?

[tedster]

The Sitemaps "indexed" numbers have been very buggy for at least a month. Yes, it "should not be" zero. But if your urls are showing under site: operator, then they are indexed - no matter what buggy numbers are being reported in Webmaster Tools.

[mike73]

Thanks, tedster. That was the reassurance I was looking for. I thought that was the case, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't completely misunderstanding something.

[Susan Moskwa]

Hi Mike,

(FYI I work on Webmaster Tools.) The number of "Indexed URLs" on the Sitemaps page only includes URLs that are submitted in your Sitemap(s). So for example, if you had http://www.example.com/ in your Sitemap but http://www.example.com/index.html was indexed, the Sitemap details would report 0 URLs indexed (because the one indexed != the one in your Sitemap). If your Sitemap doesn't contain 100% of your site's URLs, or if there are small differences between the URLs in your Sitemap vs. the ones indexed (e.g. one includes some optional URL parameter), then that can affect this number. It's only designed to report the number of URLs from your Sitemap that are indexed, not the total count of URLs from your domain that are indexed.

If you think there's a bug in our data, I would strongly encourage you to come report it to us in our forum (search for [Google Webmaster Help Forum] and you should find us). Please include your URL if you do. Thanks!

[tedster]

Thank you Susan. For those who want to find Google's Webmaster Help Forum, there's a direct link for it in this forum's Charter [webmasterworld.com]. Scroll down to the section that discusses Specific Details and you'll find four different suggestions for reaching out to Google on all manner of problems relating to Google Search.