"Index Status" dropped by 25%

[Tonearm]

google.com/webmasters show my "Index Status" changed from ~12K pages to ~9K pages from one week to the next. How can I track down the problem? I did drastically increase the number of products shown per page right around that time, which increased page load time quite a bit. Could that have caused this?

[Rob_Banks]

My first thought isn't page load time, but number of products. 1,000 products at 10 products per page is 100 pages. 1,000 products at 20 products per page is 50 pages.

I also had a recent increase in page load time, but pages indexed increased quite a bit. Anecdotal, but it suggests page load isn't the issue.

[Tonearm]

I've actually had robots noindex on every page after page 1 for a long time. Are there any usual suspects for this type of thing?

[Rob_Banks]

WMT is notorious for "interesting" results so I wouldn't invest too much time in tracking a "problem" unless there is some other indicator that the problem actually exists. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I lost about 3,000 pages from the index two weeks ago, then increased 10,000 the next week. It's hard for me to consider it a highly accurate metric.

I mostly use it as a measure of inbound link health so I'll work on links if I think the index number is too low. YMMV

[tangor]

I run parallel info in that I have my site logs stats and compare to what GWMT reports. Most times GWMT is wrong at any given moment of time. :) BUT, overall, they do catch up. Might be a regional report error/delay to your reporting in GWMT. The web is fast, but it is not INSTANT. I take GWMT reports at WEEKLY levels, not hourly. :)

[Robert Charlton]

Tonearm - forgive rushed reply here, but this sounds like it might be a pagination issue, which possibly you haven't been handling well. Take a look at this recent thread and see if any of what's discussed looks or sounds familiar...

Best Way To Handle Pagination?
May 24, 2015
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4748904.htm [webmasterworld.com]