Top 5 This Week

Related Posts

Google's Index Status Report Can Be Delayed

Google Webmaster ToolsThe 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

sitemap-count

index-status-count

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.

Popular Articles