Is Google cleaning their index?

[LaCabra]

Hi All,

I've just noticed that Google has dropped the number of indexed pages for one of my very competitve keywords from 208,000,000 to 23,000,000. Anyone else noticing similar symptoms??

thanks
frank

[Sharpseo]

It might be a part of the new infrastructure they're rolling out. Those result #s are just rough estimates, anyways. They very well could have changed the way they get that number. But, a change of 10x does seem pretty extreme.

[john269]

I always see the index for my keywords go from one extreme to the other in every few days. So this could be the case for your keyword(s) aswell.

[minstrel]

This has been happening to a number of sites ever since Big Daddy began. What I see on my sites is the number of pages indexed hit rock bottom a week or two ago and has since been steadily increasing again.

[mdvaldosta]

Yea I dropped from 10k to 800 on one of my sites... also dropped in allinanchor positions.

[minstrel]

I just checked again. I said they hit bottom and have been increasing. It appears i spoke too soon. They've gone down significantly again - down to about 5% of what the total was sat two months ago.

Of course, since PR has gone up for those sites and Google rankings show little change, this begs the question: Is it really the case that there are fewer pages in the index? Or is it that Google is just reporting fewer pages? And the other obvious question is why are the numbers fluctuating?

[2003m2003]

3 of my sites drop 30%, hope that will recover soon.

[JEET]

1 site of mine lost over 50% and is still dropping after a little recovery of like 5 pages only. The PR maintains which I think would have dropped in case of some penalty. Back Link count also is stable.
I have seen similar drops for a small forum as well.
Index cleaning could be a possibility.
Regards
jeet

[theplayers]

I noticed that too. Number of pages indexed decreased these few days by 20% +/-

[Kngavl]

Yah my competition has dropped a bunch too.

[SEO Jeff]

I noticed DigitalPoint forums dropped as well. So maybe this is a cleaning period.

[sunchy]

Same situation with me also

[MrSupplier]

google taking bath

[hansi]

~60% dropped for me too...

[dburdon]

In my opinion this is just a period of turbulence. Sit tight. Wait for the dust to settle. Do nothing drastic.

[chiefshuddle]

Its been wacked on my site for several months.

I noticed today that I jumped from 150 yesterday to 11,200 today and just a few months ago I was around 32K.

[williamjack]

I was wondering what is happening to my site indexing got the answer now.
thanks

[hansi]

Some DCs got now very old pages in Index again. I will drink a cup of tea and just wait a few days

[gfriedm1]

so anyone have a clue as to how to increase that. my site used to respond on the first or second page every time it was searched using a vareity of keywords. now i am finding my self on the 13th 14th and 15th page. any ideas how to fix that?

[Markkus]

also hit was 5th for my keyword now 45th even with an pr increase... hope this will pass soon