Many Search engine optimizers use site command to check the number of index pages of their site in any search engine. To check how healthy site is in any particular search engine SEOs use site:www.yoursite.com query. It is pretty well if 90% pages are indexed in search engine.

But the main problem is, the site operator is not reliable to check the number of index pages as these days users are reporting that Google is dropping their pages or Microsoft is dropping the pages. So SEO determines this drop of pages in search engine by using Site command.

Is this a good way to see how many pages are index in search engine?
After reading and searching on various forums I came to know that the answer is NO. You should not depend on site operator to check the number of index pages in search engine.

In Google Groups Googler JohnMu wrote why you should not depend on these numbers. He told it might be:

• the previous approximation was incorrect, the current one is closer to the actual number of URLs that we have indexed or would show to users
• the previous approximation was close and the current one is worse than before (this can happen)
• a change in our algorithms (we make a lot of changes that will impact crawling, indexing and ranking -- for some sites perhaps more than for others)
• an issue on your website (perhaps it's not reachable or the site is returning server errors -- you can find out more in your Webmaster Tools account).

At the same time Jeremiah Andrick from Microsoft told that it is not reliable to use Site operator to check the number of index pages. By using Site: operator you can only get an estimate about the number of index pages in search engine.


I think all SEOs use this operator, but now it is the time to think again :-)>.

SEO Tips – Get the tips and tricks to boost up your ranking on various search engines by browsing the pages of Important SEO Tips.

Please send your comments/suggesions.