What do you see when you search "domainname.com"?

[Planet13]

Sorry if this has been answered already but...

What are you supposed to see when you search in the search box for <your own site>:

domainname.com

I am getting the home page and the ten pack, but all the sites listed below are other sites (like our facebook page, and the various ranking tracker sites).

Is that the way it is supposed to work?

Or should I be seeing the individual pages from my own site when I do this kind of a search?

~~~~

Alternatively, if I do a search for domainname without the .com I am listed third with a four pack of site links
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 11:21 pm (utc) on Aug 1, 2013]
[edit reason] made all examples consistent [/edit]

[aristotle]

Most likely the results from other sites are pages that either have a link to your page or have the text "domainname.com" visible somewhere.

The usual way to see a listing of indexed pages on your site is to use the site: command, e.g. search for site:domainname.com

[netmeg]

All the sites below the ten pack, or the sites IN the ten pack?

[Planet13]

@ netmeg:

"All the sites below the ten pack, or the sites IN the ten pack?"

all the sites that are BELOW the ten pack. (Sorry I did not make that clear originally).

the ten pack itself shows pages from my site. It also shows the page title and then either breadcrubs, meta description, or short text from page.

@ aristotle:

"The usual way to see a listing of indexed pages on your site is to use the site: command, e.g. search for site:domainname.com"

thanks for the clarification. For some reason i had the crazy thought that using the yoursitename.com would list the pages indexed in google similar to the site: operator would.

Been a long, sleepless night and day.

[lucy24]

It's covering its bets by allowing both options: either you're searching for the site itself, or you're searching for the text string "example.com". In the second case, the search engine would bring up other sites that name yours. Generally your sitename wouldn't occur very often on your own site-- especially not with trailing "dot com". (Look at the present page for comparison :))

But then you learn something else: of those sites that mention yours by name, you can see which ones the search engine considers most relevant and/or prestigious.

[g1smd]

The site:example.com search can be refined if the site has more than 1000 pages.

For example, site:example.com/folder/ returns results only from that named folder.

Don't forget site:www.example.com and site:example.com -inurl:www for checking duplicate content issues.

[FranticFish]

You can refine the site: search to include/exclude folders if the site has significantly less than 1000 pages too.

[Planet13]

"But then you learn something else: of those sites that mention yours by name, you can see which ones the search engine considers most relevant and/or prestigious."

Thank You, lucy24