The other day someone shared an interesting site with me on Google Webmaster Tools. It was intriguing, so I dug into it. In short, the site had 33,000 pages indexed according to the sitemap report within Google Webmaster Tools but only 3 pages indexed according to the Index Status report within Google Webmaster Tools.
I decided to ask others in the Google Webmaster Help forums if they have ever seen anything like it because I clearly never covered this case at this site.
The answer was no.
Some history about the site:
The site is a few weeks old.
The site has a sitemap file a couple days after it went live.
The site command seems to have about thousands of pages being returned.
Google Webmaster Tools Shows:
33,000 of 33,000 pages submitted and indexed via the Sitemap report.
3 pages indexed according to the Index Status report
Why wouldn’t the Index Status and Sitemap index counts match up?
I asked Google’s John Mueller on a Google Hangout yesterday and he said:
Typically the Index Status report is a weekly snap shot, so it is delayed
Sitemap numbers are updated daily
Index Status and Sitemap report on different index types
Since this site is new, do not worry
I ask the question right at the beginning of the hangout, so just start the video and you can watch his response.
In this business, you see something new every day. I am glad I dug into this example, but this is not an open invitation to send me your issues. I probably respond to 1% of them because I am not a nice person. 😉
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Update: A few days later the Index Status report updated to show 33,000+ pages. So this was just a delay. Nice to see.
