Using the Site: Command to See if Your Content Has Been Indexed in Search Engines

One thing I constantly talk about here is waiting for sites to get fully indexed in search engines, sandbox filters (which prevent your new sites and pages from displaying in search results for a certain period of time), and using good link structure and sitemaps to get all of your content indexed.

Once your sites are up and running, it’s very easy to see how many of your pages have been indexed by Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Before I show you how, though, be aware that a page being indexed and it showing up in its proper place in search results are two different beasts. Because of sandbox filters for new sites, your content may very well show up as being indexed, but it’s not yet in the mix of the actual search results, as far as ranking where it should be when the filter is lifted once your site is sufficiently aged.

Let’s start with Google. Run a normal Google search, and type in the following into the search box: site:www.gadooney.com (Type it exactly like that, with no spaces. And type it into the search box, not into the area in your browser where actual URLs appear.)

That will take you to a search results page that shows every page that Google has indexed for gadooney.com. To see your own site, simply replace gadooney.com with your own domain. The total number of pages indexed will likely be greater than actual posts or pages you’ve created, as most search engines index feeds and categories and other extraneous sections of your site as actual pages, especially if you’re using WordPress to manage your content.

To check Yahoo and MSN, repeat the above process exactly, as far as running a search in each search engine using the site:www.yoursite.com syntax.

What do you do with all that data, once you get it? Well, honestly, not too much at the beginning stages, as the value in the site: command at the initial stages is simply to check that the search engines are able to find all of your pages and index it. If they are, then you know that your link structure is working its magic and enabling search engine spiders to find your content. There’s more valuable data in the results from the site: command, but we’ll dig into that in a later post.

Using the Site: Command to See if Your Content Has Been Indexed in Search Engines and related information can be found in Affiliate Toolbox, SEO, Search Engines