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Thursday, March 05, 2009
Every now and then in the webmaster blogosphere and forums, this issue comes up: when a webmaster
performs a site:example.com query on their website, the number of indexed results
differs from what is displayed in their Sitemaps report in Webmaster Tools. Such a discrepancy
may smell like a bug, but it's actually by design. Your Sitemap report only reflects the URLs
you've submitted in your Sitemap file. The site operator, on the other hand, takes
into account whatever Google has crawled, which may include URLs not included in your Sitemap,
such as newly added URLs or other URLs discovered via links.
Think of the site operator as a quick diagnosis of the general health of your site in
Google's index. site operator results can show you:
a rough estimate of how many pages have been indexed
Your Sitemap report provides more granular statistics about the URLs you submitted, such as the
number of indexed URLs vs. the number submitted for crawling, and Sitemap-specific warnings or
errors that may have occurred when Google tried to access your URLs.
You can check out our Help Center for more on the
site: operator
and
Sitemaps. If you have further questions or
issues, please post to our
Webmaster Help Forum,
where experienced webmasters and Googlers are happy to help.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eThe number of indexed results shown by the \u003ccode\u003esite:\u003c/code\u003e operator may differ from the Sitemaps report in Webmaster Tools because the \u003ccode\u003esite:\u003c/code\u003e operator reflects all crawled pages while the Sitemaps report reflects only submitted URLs.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ccode\u003esite:\u003c/code\u003e operator can be used to get a rough estimate of indexed pages, detect potential hacking, and identify duplicate content issues.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe Sitemaps report in Webmaster Tools offers detailed statistics about submitted URLs, including the number of indexed URLs and any errors encountered during crawling.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["The number of indexed results from a `site:example.com` query differs from a Sitemap report because the latter only reflects submitted URLs. The `site` operator, however, accounts for all crawled URLs, including those not in the Sitemap. This operator offers a general health check of a site in Google's index, providing a rough estimate of indexed pages, indicating potential hacks, and highlighting duplicate content. The Sitemap report gives detailed statistics on submitted URLs, like indexed vs. submitted numbers.\n"],null,["Thursday, March 05, 2009\n\n\nEvery now and then in the webmaster blogosphere and forums, this issue comes up: when a webmaster\nperforms a `site:example.com` query on their website, the number of indexed results\ndiffers from what is displayed in their Sitemaps report in Webmaster Tools. Such a discrepancy\nmay smell like a bug, but it's actually by design. Your Sitemap report only reflects the URLs\nyou've submitted in your Sitemap file. The `site` operator, on the other hand, takes\ninto account whatever Google has crawled, which may include URLs not included in your Sitemap,\nsuch as newly added URLs or other URLs discovered via links.\n\n\nThink of the `site operator` as a quick diagnosis of the general health of your site in\nGoogle's index. `site` operator results can show you:\n\n- a rough estimate of how many pages have been indexed\n- one indication of if your site has been [hacked](/search/blog/2008/04/my-sites-been-hacked-now-what)\n- if you have duplicate titles or snippets\n\nHere is an example query using the `site` operator:\n\n\nYour Sitemap report provides more granular statistics about the URLs you submitted, such as the\nnumber of indexed URLs vs. the number submitted for crawling, and Sitemap-specific warnings or\nerrors that may have occurred when Google tried to access your URLs.\n\n\nYou can check out our Help Center for more on the\n[site: operator](/search/docs/monitor-debug/search-operators/all-search-site)\nand\n[Sitemaps](/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/overview). If you have further questions or\nissues, please post to our\n[Webmaster Help Forum](https://support.google.com/webmasters/community),\nwhere experienced webmasters and Googlers are happy to help.\n\nPosted by [Charlene Perez](http://www.linkedin.com/in/char-perez), Search Quality Team"]]
