Is Google Doing Away with Site Counts?

by John Greer on 12/08/2009 at 10:38 am in Commentary, Observations, SEO

As Google has been heading down the path of less (or at least, less thorough) public information for non-verified site owners, and conversely more information for verified site owners, they may be taking another step down that path.

Below is the current Google “site:” style search which returns the number of results found – in other words the page count for that site.

Current Google Site: Count

The new 3 column Google interface appears to drop the number of results found when conducting the same type of search.

The New 3-Column Google Interface Site: Count

However, conducting a normal search without the “site:” operator in the new layout, Google still displays the number of total results.

A normal search will still display the number of total results

I may have missed it, but I haven’t seen anyone mention this notable change. This has been a consistent pattern I’ve seen so far, but share your thoughts if you are or are not seeing the same thing.

I’d like to hear from Google on this, as I still consider this search feature useful even today in diagnosing site issues.

Update: Recently, I noticed that Google IS now listing site counts on the new look (although not before our article got a fair number of Sphinns). I’m not sure if this was a change of mind of simply a mistake on Google’s part.