Why Does the Number of Pages Indexed in Google Webmaster Tools Drop From Time to Time
One of the metrics used by search marketers is to check out how many pages a site has within the Google index. The reason, having more pages within the index means a higher probability of your site being able to rank for their targeted search term. Recently, I came across someone who asked a question “Why does the number of pages indexed in Google fluctuate from time to time and sometimes a large number of pages are dropped off”.
Well there could be several cause for something like this, here’s are some of them.
1 – Google updates their data center constantly, the drop in number of pages indexed might be temporary.
2 – You recently implemented cannonical tags to lower the number of duplicated pages. This might cause Google to drop duplicated pages from its index.
3 – Pages lack inbound links. Google might index your pages from the initial crawl, but due to resource management they might drop off pages that they deem not important. (This is normally very rare, unless you dont even have a single link to the disappearing pages.)
4 – You did something wrong that might have tripped a filter, so Google might be removing those pages.
What to do in the face of something like this. Well there isnt a 100% absolute answer, but here’s what I recommend. First take a step back, dont panic and see its a Google update or your tech team have recently implemented a canonical change. Next make sure that all your pages have at least an internal link pointing to the page. This would allow Google to constantly crawl the pages in your site so that it doesnt drop into the invisible web. Last a quick tip is to ensure that your webiste doesnt trip any penalties and update your site from time to time to ensure content freshness for the engines to come back.