Google acknowledges problems with site: query

[minstrel]

I have questioned in a few posts whether the problem with sites dropping out of Google's index is really a problem with dropped pages or an intentional or unintentional problem with the site: query. I've detailed elsewhere the reasons for my wondering about this.

Now, Google has at least partially admitted that there is a problem with results returned by the site: query...

Issues with the site: operator query
By Vanessa Fox, Google Engineering

We'd like to give you all a quick update on some of the issues you have been seeing when you do a site: search to see how many pages of your site are in the index. We've been refreshing our supplemental results (you can read more about that in Matt Cutts' blog post) and this refresh has involved some serious changes under the hood. Unfortunately, with change of this scale, there sometimes are bugs. In this case, we found a few bugs that affected the site: operator. Some particular ones you may have noticed are that the following types of queries don't return the correct number of results:

• site: queries where you type in a trailing slash (such as site:www.example.com/)
• site: queries for a domain with punctuation (such as site: www.example-site.com)

We've got fixes for all of these rolling out in the next few days. They didn't come out sooner because we've been testing them thoroughly, making sure you don't get any unexpected surprises.

This bug doesn't involve any pages being dropped from the index. It's the site: operator that isn't working properly. We're freezing all refreshes of the supplemental results until these issues are fixed, and things should be back to normal in a few days.

We'll keep you posted when all fixes have been made.

In the meantime, site: queries without the trailing slash may provide a better result (such as site:www.example.com). If you are checking your site using the Index Stats page of Google Sitemaps, note that it uses the trailing slash in the query, so you may see incorrect results until this bug is fixed.

Thanks for your patience as we resolve this issue.

In my opinion, this is only part of the story but at least it's a partial acknowledgment of a problem, and not the pat "it was a problem with shady linking and it's already fixed" garbage that Matt Cutts handed us this week.

Note to Google: As a suggestion for future Matt Cutts "press releases", please don't start with the assumption that we're all idiots next time?

[goScooby]

FINALLY they are willing to come clean rather than trying to blow smoke up our @sses as they have been doing for how many months now? Hopefully people will take this is a lesson and start using their common sense again (as you have long been doing minstrel) and start viewing Matt at just some guy with a blog rather than an SEO deity.

[SEO Jeff]

I think Matt Cutts should be fired for giving us such useless information. I am shocked Google themselfs came out and admited to a big issue like this.

[Keone]

still my indexed pages are dropping. A few more every day. pages are nowhere to be found on google anymore and searches I normally got hits from now disappeared.

The "funny" thing is that the pages with my "real" content are nowehere to be found anymore...

page like contact - privacy policy - TOS - still appear but the pages where my site is about are dropping from the index.

All unique content, written by myself.

My site isn't big I only have like 50 pages or so but they now only show 9 pages in the index and none of my real content.

They only started to drop just recently but every day there is about one or two less.

The things I changed was to put a nofollow on the print option and some started adding nofollow's to other things in for instance my blog to remove the "loops" Matt spoke about a while ago and I added a footer to my pages.

Should I change this back and see if pages are getting reindexed again or should I wait a few longer and see how it works out? It did not affect my serps as of yet; the funny thing is that I'm actually crawling to a better position by two or three positions a day.

Danny
keone.com

[emil2k]

But is anybody but me seeing that this not just a site: query problem but a de-indexing problem, thus a drop in traffic...

Am I the only one who noticed a drop in traffic with the drop of the site: query #?

Seems what they are saying is the de-indexed pages will stay de-indexed

[MKInfo]

Well in that case I'm going to rush off and remove all the trailing slashes from my co-op urls.

[jan.onesork]

I had indexed about 10,000 pages - and I have eight now :-/

No, it isn't only the "site:" problem - my pages lost their positions

[gdtechind]

Originally Posted by goScooby

FINALLY they are willing to come clean rather than trying to blow smoke up our @sses as they have been doing for how many months now? Hopefully people will take this is a lesson and start using their common sense again (as you have long been doing minstrel) and start viewing Matt at just some guy with a blog rather than an SEO deity.

i also do not see Matt Cutts as someone really big, but some people consider him GOD of SEO and i have seen that whatever comes from his Blog is usually something people can know using their common sense.

[chelsea]

Posted my experience with being de-indexed and supplemental results quite some time ago now ( and this seems to be getting worse the longer we wait ).

When searching
site: mydomain.com
I get some 226 supplemental results. Used to get some 60.000 results before.

When searching
site:mydomain.com/
I get 1out of 2 results with this "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed."

When clicking on it all that is left is
1 out of 1 results. My homepage - nothing else.

If it was not for the occasional visitor from G maps I would not get any traffic whatsoever from this search engine anymore.

Saying it is annoying is more than the truth.

[Nintendo]

I get about the same thing with all three types of entering the domain name.

site:domain.com
site:www.domain.com/
site:www.domain.com

[Mong]

Mgoi minstrel for saving my heart and mind

I was feeling in problem with my one forum website because its site: # is very low now.

But i would admit google referral are also lowered in these days for that forum website.

[finmere]

about time

[Caios]

There more of a problem than there admiting. You can tell your pages are missing from the index without relying on site:

[longcall911]

Originally Posted by minstrel

"it was a problem with shady linking and it's already fixed" garbage that Matt Cutts handed us this week.

In my view, disinformation is a key factor in the role that Matt plays.

/tom/

[markhutch]

We're freezing all refreshes of the supplemental results until these issues are fixed, and things should be back to normal in a few days.

What am I missing here? What does NOT refeshing supplemental results have to do with the site: command? From what I've seen most "supplemental results" don't get refreshed that often anyway. When I first started seeing them pop into the search mix it was right around the time when Yahoo said it had a bigger index than Google and Google removed the # of pages in its index from their front page. I wonder if Yahoo somehow "baited" Google with that index size issue and Google fell for it?

[Basoone]

So does this mean traffic from Google should not be affected? Good to here this is a problem on their side not on webmasters linking scheme. Tnx for the info minstrell..

[Nawaralsaadi]

Thanks minstrel for the update, indeed it is time they said the truth rather then take us for a ride, and I agree with the comments posted here, it is not just the problems highlighted by them but the index is really losing pages and our google traffic went down to almost zero since this problem happened..

if this problem keep going for several weeks or even months, google might lose a chunk of its userbase.

Nawar

[LaCabra]

Nice find Minstrel ... and as you mentioned, this is just one peice of the problem. G is just changing a spark plug, they need to replace the transmission aswell. Would be interesting to see if they will come out with another release outlining the other problems. Or hopefully someone will leak something out.

[ROAR]

Gracias for sharing...

[LaCabra]

Hmm interesting thing is that release came from the "sitemaps team" ... does anyone else here find this peculiar?