Has Google shrunk it’s index or cleaned it out?

Posted by Scott on December 3rd, 2007 .

Anyone else noticing the change in Google today?
The Results 1-10 of about xxxxx has shrunk hugely for all the keywords I keep an eye on.
For example ‘tattoos’ used to bring up around 30-40 million pages

Who loves you baby

After this morning I only see around 5.5 million,

312 

that is quite a drop, also seeing this whether I am signed in or out of Google and not only in Google.co.uk, I am seeing a drop in Google.com as well. Is this a clear out or just a massive adjustment?

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9 Comments »

Comment by Ian from Disney World Tickets Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-03 12:51:56

I track the phrase “orlando villas”. Down from 2 million to 225,000.

It was 4 million a few months ago, so this has happened before I think.

 
Comment by Justin Cook from SEO Toronto Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-03 14:23:22

Perhaps they’re just dumping more into the supplemental index. (where it belongs…)

 
Comment by Amanda Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-03 16:53:43

Looks like a Google query for “tattoo” returns around 50 million results pages, and a query for “tattoos” returns over 23 mil - at 9:50 a.m. MST on Dec 3rd. Did you check all the datacenters when you noticed the strange fluctuation in pages indexed?

Comment by Scott from Scott Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-03 20:57:36

They have reverted back again now but were checked from various IP’s this morning, strange.

 
 
Comment by Abdul from The Webmasters Tool Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-03 18:16:24

I am not surprised to be honest

google used to have so much indexed which wasn’t that useful

however now it hopefully shrinks it to the most useful bits

 
Comment by Michael @ Freshome Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-04 12:52:14

I see that the numbers are back. Maybe they were tweaking something in the algoritm, and you noticed.

 
Comment by Johnathan Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-04 17:39:47

that varies depending whether you’re signed in or not.

 
Comment by ScottUA from Underground Attraction Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-07 20:44:37

It seems like Google is always tweaking it’s listings. One day you’ll see 2,220,000 for a term. And you’ll look the next day and they’ll list half of that. I’ve given up long ago trying to figure them out.

 
Comment by Jack Yan from The disappearing Google references Subscribed to comments via email
2008-01-27 05:15:42

I have been noticing the same for months and the reductions seem to have continued into January 2008. I’ve seen halving for the terms we track but nothing quite as drastic as the figures being reported above.

 
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