site: no longer works right? Or is there a new supp index?

[hannamyluv]

I have two diff clients, in two seperate niches. I do site:example.com in Google and I get a number for the number of pages indexed. If I add a keyphrase (site:example.com widgets) I get back a larger number than without the search.

So, just to be clear, an example -
site:example.com - 191 pages indexed
site:example.com widgets - 242 pages indexed

So what gives? Is the site operator broken. Is there a supplemental index that no longer shows in the normal results? Something else?

[fishfinger]

In my experience site: returns the number of total pages in the index including the 'omitted results'. If/when you get to the last page of the primary index results the number suddenly reduces.

Dupe content? How many pages should you have in your site?

[tedster]

In my experience, the site: operator returns a lower number than the total of all urls that are indexed for the domain. On sites that have a directory structure, searching on site:example.com/dir can turn up urls in the results that are not reported for site:example.com.

I've long felt that one reason for dropping the "Supplemental Result" tag [webmasterworld.com] back in summer 2007 was that new types of partitions were being introduced to the total database (see patent [patft.uspto.gov]). Combined with the challenges that already existed in estimating the number of urls (they do say "about" for a reason) such database partitions could add yet another layer of challenge to the site: operator numbers.