Significant drop in indexed pages and significant SERP improvement

[moshebar]

hey,
a month ago i had something like 6,000 indexed pages on google for my website, and i was on the third page when searching for the keyword i compete on .

After several great (IMHO)SEO improvements i have reached the first (and sometimes second, it keeps on jumping) place on the second page for the keyword's search results,
but now google only has 600 indexed pages of my website.

My opinion is that it only left the "best" pages of my website, and it could be shown that when you search for something more specific i almost always get the first/second place on google,

but still - can anyone shed some light on this matter ?

[tedster]

First, congrats on the improvements. Are you getting the number of indexed pages from a site: operator query or from Webmaster Tools?

[bcc1234]

or from Webmaster Tools

You can get the number of pages indexed in the webmaster tools?

I thought it only contains links to serps with the site operator.

If not, can you explain how to check the number of pages?

[tedster]

My mistake - you're right. I was thinking about the Sitemap information in WMT, but that's just about crawlability, and not urls indexed.

About the site: operator - sometimes it is quite incomplete at the top level. If you run the query one directory at a time [site:example.com/directoryA] and so on, you often can find many more indexed urls. I've seen a 40% difference or so. Still, that's not enough to account for a drop from 6,000 to 600.

Can you see from your logs if Google is sending search traffic to urls that are not currently listed in the site: operator results?

[moshebar]

i have only one directory and no subdomains,
so when i use site:mysite.com it always shows the complete picture of my indexed pages .

[bcc1234]

Try

site:mysite.com +com

An oldie, but still works sometimes.

[moshebar]

the same..
look, it's a fact - they reduce my indexed web pages while improving my SERP..
the question is why ?

[moshebar]

by the way - although i am sad about the indexed pages number on google - i just got to the sixth position in google ! :)
soo exciting for me!

[tedster]

Well, I can say I'm not seeing a general downturn in pages indexed. In fact, I've been surprised at how large a percentage is indexed for the domains that I recently checked.

That said, I have recently been focused on brand name sites, and this thread about improved ranking brand names [webmasterworld.com] may be discussing a factor that is in play.

If I were in the position you describe, moshebar, I would be pouring through server logs to see what the real story is on traffic and urls in the search results - then use that data to move forward. The way that Google results and operators shift around today, traffic is the better focus.