1

In Google Webmaster Tools, Google Index -> Index Status shows 40 indexed pages:

enter image description here

However Crawl > Sitemaps shows 5 indexed pages, and 35 submitted:

enter image description here

There are no crawl errors in the sitemap.

Why are these numbers inconsistent? How many pages is Google actually indexing?

Improve this question
1

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

You most likely have indexed pages that are not included in your sitemap.

Google Index -> Index Status - shows all pages that are indexed for your domain.

Crawl > Sitemaps - shows which pages were indexed from the sitemap you submitted

This is normal. However, if the number grows quite large for a small site you might have to plug a few holes using your robots.txt file. Here is some sample code:

User-agent:  *
Disallow: */personal-folder/

Also, keep in mind that GWT is not very accurate and information doesn't get updated at the same time.

Improve this answer
2
  • Thanks for answering! I understand that not all submitted pages are indexed (and how robots.txt works) but I still don't see why it's saying 40 pages are indexed rather than 5 elsewhere in the UI. Also those 40 pages are all unique - ie, blog articles with large amounts of unique content, so I'm not sure why they're not being indexed.
    – mikemaccana
    Jan 6, 2016 at 20:16
  • Because Index Status shows total # of pages indexed and Sitemap shows how many pages from your sitemap were indexed.
    – dasickle
    Jan 6, 2016 at 20:20

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.