Google page count is constantly up and down

[speedshopping]

Does anyone have experience with Google and number of indexed pages - we have a site where Google seems to add considerable amounts of pages, only for them to seemingly remove a few weeks later so our page count is constantly up and down?

Is there any specific reason for this happening?

[tedster]

I see it too, as do many others. Is there any reason? Yes, the "estimates" for total pages indexed are apparently challenging for Google to calculate, given the way they shard data. Google is not exactly a desktop epplication and we can't think of it that way.

The estimates often get wonky when the big G makes back end technology changes, and the recent update seems to have involved exactly that kind of thing. The numbers are buggy for report functions, and more inconsistent than usual across the various data centers.

[Nuttakorn]

I have heard that now the data of Site: and Link: command is not reflect the truth data, Google asked webmaster to use Google Webmaster Tool instead of checking from the consumer search product. It will be more difficulty to check the competitors or the site which we have no access.

[speedshopping]

our page count seems to have a direct correlation with traffic levels, that is, the more pages, the more traffic - some critics argue against this case.

If Google seemingly ranks these pages, why would they then remove them?

[AG4Life]

I've been monitoring the site: links of my site and a few of my competitors. They have all dropped considerably since this Google update madness started, some by as much as 70%. Even after the bulk of the drops a months ago, the last month has seen continued dropping, one competitor went from close to 250K pages indexed to as low as 180K (they started at more than half a million in April). I've experienced drops on my site as well, from 120K to now 50K.

I too have noticed a correlation between dropping of site: links and traffic from Google.

My site is still dropping though, but I've noticed that in the last week or so, my competitor's numbers have gone up on a daily basis.

From Google Webmaster Tools, I'm noticing a drop in the number if internal links (and the number of linked pages). I've lost about 20% of my internal links over the last month, and around the same percent of linked pages. The number of external links and linked pages have also dropped. This could be the removal of duplicate pages (this is a forum, notorious for having duplicate links), and the stats reported by GWT may have no relation to the site: links either. But then again, it could be Google dropping the lowly ranked pages from the index for now and then re-indexing them at a later time (which might explain why my competitor's site: links are going up again).

[AG4Life]

To follow up, my competitor's site are still gaining back their number of links, rather quickly. And since yesterday, I've noticed my link number increasing for the first time in a long time. My GWT numbers are increasing too (gained 25K new internal links according to GWT in the last week).