• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
          Moz Local

          Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Technical SEO
        4. Indexed pages

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Indexed pages

        Technical SEO
        4
        6
        2740
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • muzzmoz
          muzzmoz last edited by

          Just started a site audit and trying to determine the number of pages on a client site and whether there are more pages being indexed than actually exist. I've used four tools and got four very different answers...

          • Google Search Console: 237 indexed pages
          • Google search using site command: 468 results
          • MOZ site crawl: 1013 unique URLs
          • Screaming Frog: 183 page titles, 187 URIs (note this is a free licence, but should cut off at 500)

          Can anyone shed any light on why they differ so much? And where lies the truth?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • MikeGracia
            MikeGracia last edited by

            Another option is if the site uses a CMS. If so, then you can create a sitemap for content pages/posts etc,.

            Personally, I'm with Krzysztof Furtak  on SF. Screaming Frog rocks. It'll find most pages, except perhaps Orphan pages as it wouldn't be able to find a link to crawl to discover the page.

            If it's really important to get as many pages as possible, I'd do the following (I've put an Astrix (*) next to ones that some people may think are a tad extreme)

            • Run a Screaming Frog crawl
            • Grab a sitemap from your CMS
            • Check any server-based analytics (AWSTATS etc)
            • Check your access_log file & parse out URLs in there**(*)**
            • site: queries, with & without www, and also using * as a subdomain (use something like Moz's toolbar to export)
            • As Krzysztof suggests, Scrapebox would extract data too, but be careful scraping, you may get an IP slap.(*)
            • Export crawl data from Moz & a tool such as Deep Crawl
            • Throw the pages from all into Excel and de-dupe.
            • Once you have a de-duped list, as an optional last step, go back to Screaming Frog and enter list mode (I have the paid version, not sure if it's possible with the free one) and run a crawl over all the de-duped URLs to get status codes etc

            If you're going to do this sort of thing a fair bit - buy a Screaming Frog license, it's an awesome tool and can be useful in a multitude of situations. 🙂

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • MikeGracia
              MikeGracia @Insomniacs last edited by

              The site: command is handy for asking Google what pages it knows about, however if Muzzmoz wants to know the number of pages on a site, you'd need more than this.

              Also, re: your different ways or querying, I like to use:

              site:*.domain.com - This can show other subdomains too, that may otherwise be missed 😉

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • PenaltyHammer
                PenaltyHammer @Insomniacs last edited by

                Ok so check with site something under 1000 pages and go to the last results page. You'll see that there'll be different number (in almost all cases).

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • Insomniacs
                  Insomniacs last edited by

                  I Will Always Prefer To Check Manually Using Site Command Because,  site: operator, which will show us how many pages Google currently has indexed for the domain.

                  There Will Be Difference Between Index status in search console and current index as search console update the data after few days.

                  The number of indexed URLs is almost always significantly smaller than the number of crawled URLs, because Total indexed excludes URLs identified as duplicates, non-canonical or those that contain a meta no index tag.

                  Also, Check For Index(Preferred)  Version Of Your Site

                  For E.g-

                  • http://abc.com
                  • http://www.abc.com
                  • https://abc.com
                  • https://www.abc.com

                  You can check More About this Here - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2642366?hl=en

                  PenaltyHammer MikeGracia 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • PenaltyHammer
                    PenaltyHammer last edited by

                    Hi

                    Most accurate number is from screaming frog (if you have less than 500 pages or paid version if more than 500).

                    Google indexes what it wants and if good enough to show in google index. If some pages are similar, got quality issues, blocked by robots etc then it won't show all. BTW don't think number in GSC or google index is good, check it manually because there can be 468 but in fact 200 only.

                    Moz can have "historical" pages that now don't exists or don't care about quality issues.

                    The truth is in screaming frog - most accurate number. If you used google user agent then number is the max that can appear in google index. If screaming frog user agent with turned off robots then you'll see bigger number (but google won't show it because of blocks).

                    If you want to check what's indexed then use tool like scrapebox. First get all urls (maybe without images if you don't care), then check indexed with sb. What's not indexed, can have some issues.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    Browse Questions

                    Explore more categories

                    • Moz Tools

                      Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                    • SEO Tactics

                      Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                    • Community

                      Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                    • Digital Marketing

                      Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                    • Research & Trends

                      Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                    • Support

                      Connect on product support and feature requests.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • RickyShockley

                      Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages

                      Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley

                      Technical SEO | | RickyShockley
                      0
                    • linklander

                      How to check if an individual page is indexed by Google?

                      So my understanding is that you can use site: [page url without http] to check if a page is indexed by Google, is this 100% reliable though? Just recently Ive worked on a few pages that have not shown up when Ive checked them using site: but they do show up when using info: and also show their cached versions, also the rest of the site and pages above it (the url I was checking was quite deep) are indexed just fine. What does this mean? thank you p.s I do not have WMT or GA access for these sites

                      Technical SEO | | linklander
                      0
                    • MonicaOConnor

                      No Index PDFs

                      Our products have about 4 PDFs a piece, which really inflates our indexed pages. I was wondering if I could add REL=No Index to the PDF's URL? All of the files are on a file server, so they are embedded with links on our product pages. I know I could add a No Follow attribute, but I was wondering if any one knew if the No Index would work the same or if that is even possible. Thanks!

                      Technical SEO | | MonicaOConnor
                      0
                    • SierraPCB

                      Why google indexed pages are decreasing?

                      Hi, my website had around 400 pages indexed  but from February, i noticed a huge decrease in indexed numbers and it is continually decreasing. can anyone help me to find out the reason. where i can get solution for that?  will it effect my web page ranking ?

                      Technical SEO | | SierraPCB
                      0
                    • Dan-Lawrence

                      Staging & Development areas should be not indexable (i.e. no followed/no index in meta robots etc)

                      Hi I take it if theres a staging or development area on a subdomain for a site, who's content is hence usually duplicate then this should not be indexable i.e. (no-indexed & nofollowed in metarobots) ? In order to prevent dupe content probs as well as non project related people seeing work in progress or finding accidentally in search engine listings ? Also if theres no such info in meta robots is there any other way it may have been made non-indexable, or at least dupe content prob removed by canonicalising the page to the equivalent page on the live site ? In the case in question i am finding it listed in serps when i search for the staging/dev area url, so i presume this needs urgent attention ? Cheers Dan

                      Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
                      0
                    • TalkInThePark

                      De-indexing millions of pages - would this work?

                      Hi all, We run an e-commerce site with a catalogue of around 5 million products. Unfortunately, we have let Googlebot crawl and index tens of millions of search URLs, the majority of which are very thin of content or duplicates of other URLs. In short: we are in deep. Our bloated Google-index is hampering our real content to rank; Googlebot does not bother crawling our real content (product pages specifically) and hammers the life out of our servers. Since having Googlebot crawl and de-index tens of millions of old URLs would probably take years (?), my plan is this: 301 redirect all old SERP URLs to a new SERP URL. If new URL should not be indexed, add meta robots noindex tag on new URL. When it is evident that Google has indexed most "high quality" new URLs, robots.txt disallow crawling of old SERP URLs. Then directory style remove all old SERP URLs in GWT URL Removal Tool This would be an example of an old URL:
                      www.site.com/cgi-bin/weirdapplicationname.cgi?word=bmw&what=1.2&how=2 This would be an example of a new URL:
                      www.site.com/search?q=bmw&category=cars&color=blue I have to specific questions: Would Google both de-index the old URL and not index the new URL after 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL (which is noindexed) as described in point 2 above? What risks are associated with removing tens of millions of URLs directory style in GWT URL Removal Tool? I have done this before but then I removed "only" some useless 50 000 "add to cart"-URLs.Google says themselves that you should not remove duplicate/thin content this way and that using this tool tools this way "may cause problems for your site". And yes, these tens of millions of SERP URLs is a result of a faceted navigation/search function let loose all to long.
                      And no, we cannot wait for Googlebot to crawl all these millions of URLs in order to discover the 301. By then we would be out of business. Best regards,
                      TalkInThePark

                      Technical SEO | | TalkInThePark
                      0
                    • wparlaman

                      What's the difference between a category page and a content page

                      Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? (  I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill

                      Technical SEO | | wparlaman
                      0
                    • fugu

                      Dynamically-generated .PDF files, instead of normal pages, indexed by and ranking in Google

                      Hi, I come across a tough problem. I am working on an online-store website which contains the functionlaity of viewing products details in .PDF format (by the way, the website is built on Joomla CMS), now when I search my site's name in Google, the SERP simply displays my .PDF files in the first couple positions (shown in normal .PDF files format: [PDF]...)and I cannot find the normal pages there on SERP #1 unless I search the full site domain in Google. I really don't want this! Would you please tell me how to figure the problem out and solve it. I can actually remove the corresponding component (Virtuemart) that are in charge of generating the .PDF files. Now I am trying to redirect all the .PDF pages ranking in Google to a 404 page and remove the functionality, I plan to regenerate a sitemap of my site and submit it to Google, will it be working for me? I really appreciate that if you could help solve this problem. Thanks very much. Sincerely SEOmoz Pro Member

                      Technical SEO | | fugu
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.