site:domain.com VS site:domain.com filetype:php

[akreider]

I get different results in Yahoo when using
1) site:domain.com
2) site:domain.com filetype:php

The first shows that Yahoo has indexed 900 pages of my website. The second shows that it has indexed over 10,000. (Google has indexed 50,000)

I also get the larger page count if I include a specific page: site:domain.com displaywidget
(I have pages like displaywidget.php?id=)
Other filetypes (like htm) give larger page counts as well.

Which of these results should I rely upon? Does Yahoo have two indexes?

My guess is that there is one category for pages that will receive a "regular" ranking and another that is heavily penalized so that the page will only appears in searches if you specify its title exactly: "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 keyword4 keyword5" and where the keywords are rare?

I have no idea what this two-tier system might be based on.

[SEOMike]

I too notice this. I used the site:www.domain.com filetype:html and noticed a jump from 2 pages to 69 pages.

What in the world is goin on here?

[akreider]

What makes this even stranger is that Slurp has only visited my website 5500 times (aka hits) since January 1st, and yet when I use 'filetype:' and combine php and html I get about 20,000 pages indexed in Yahoo.

Only Google has visited my website enough times to index 20,000 pages.

Could Yahoo still be using Google's results as a "last resort"? Or perhaps these pages are ones that Yahoo knows about, but hasn't really indexed.

[otech]

I have a similar situation; usuall Yahoo says i have 1 page indexed (when doing url:****.com)

However, if i show up in a serp and click more results from this site, it says i have 1000 or so, but only google has crawled that much; plus sometimes i get a page version that is months old and sometimes i get last weeks!

[2_much]

Yes, I've seen Yahoo using Google as backfill still, that's probably what's happening here.

Try some long obscure searches (better yet check your logs to see if you can find them) and compare Yahoo with Google & you'll see.