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Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I am doing an SEO analysis on a client's website and I am checking their search engine saturation. I am using Xenu to check the number of pages the website has and another product to see how many pages are indexed in search engines.
I am getting some strange results. Xenu tells me the website has 85 pages but when the software tells me there are over 400 pages indexed. I have gone the Google and typed in site:example.com and I get the same big number.
Is there an over indexed site (I don't know what to call it) a big problem? Is there something I can do to fix it?
I would really appreciate any advice.
Pete
Might be dynamically generated URLs that point to the same content. It could have something to do with their blog platform (if they have one) or their CMS.
Another potential issue could be for URLs that are still in the index that are no longer on their website but Google still thinks is active (and still holds in the index). Pages that should be 404'd but aren't generating the appropriate HTTP header to tell the bots that the page is no longer there.
If you can access the URLs from Google (using site:yourdomain.com), pick out a number of URLs to see where they lead to.
For these URLs that aren't really there, but are indexed, try using the Live HTTP Headers extension in Firefox to see what HTTP code it spits out. If its a page that doesn't exist and SHOULD be generating a 404 code, but isn't...then it might be a CMS/web server issue.
Basically just troubleshoot using process of elimination...
Good luck.
