info: operator unreliable - what is your experience of this?

[FranticFish]

Is anyone else noticing that the info: operator is unreliable?

I've found that sometimes I'll get no result for

info:http://www.domain.xtn/url

but then will get a result for

info:www.domain.xtn/url

Just today I got no result for either for a page on a site but when I searched for text from the page in speechmarks the page WAS in Google's index!

Anyone else seeing stuff like this?

[tedster]

If you look at the special operators [google.com] you see that Google does not recommend using the http protocol at the beginning. Enough people use it that it is "sort-of supported", but that support is not dependable.

Even more, all the special operator results are not dependable or stable. You do get some information that you can use in some ways, but not for major decisions and actions. The way Google shards their data across their million plus servers, these informational operators just cannot be spot-on accurate.

Google's top priority is the actual SERP rather than these secondary reporting functions. So I'm not surprised that you are finding discrepancies.

[goodroi]

google tends not to be very helpful with special operators that can be used for seo purposes. if i worked for google i also would not spend much time working on tools that helps seo people who are constantly trying to manipulate the serps. they do provide much better information on sites you control via webmaster central.