Written by Anastasia Kurmakaeva
The number of pages on a website is the total number of URLs contained in a portal. Normally, those that are open to the public and that are – or we want them to be – accessible to search engines are quantified, and Intranet pages or the user’s private area, for example, are not taken into account, if there is one.
Knowing the number of actual pages of the website allows us to compare it with the number of indexed pages. The ratio between these two numbers is the saturation and the target is 100%. Low saturation is a symptom of an indexability problem, because if a website’s pages are not being indexed, it is because there is some obstacle for search engines to access, crawl its content and add it to their index. This is where the importance of knowing how many pages make up our site, and comparing it with the number of indexed URLs, lies, to make sure that everything is progressing correctly.
In static portals, it is usually easy to know the number of pages that make up the portal. In dynamic portals, on the other hand, knowing the total number of pages at any given time can be much more complicated, as many variables come into play, including aspects such as filters, URL parameters, etc.
There is also the possibility of a scenario where the number of indexed pages significantly exceeds the number of actual pages on the website. In cases like this, it is likely that we are facing a situation in which duplicate content and thin content has been generated, and it is in our interest to solve it as soon as possible to prevent it from taking its toll on our positioning.
