When you perform a search like [site:nameofthewebsite.it], Google shows the resources of the website in no specific order. If it’s true that, generally, on top of the list you will find the homepage, it’s not true that the other resources are listed in order of importance.

Many years ago it was possible to use a hack to see all the resources from the search engine in order of PageRank, but this function was eliminated by Google a long time ago.

A similar thing happens when you use the operator “site:” with keywords. In this case, Google shows the pages of a website in order that could be of relevance. However we need to bear in mind that this order is not the same as what Google would present on the SERPs for the same query, without the “site:” operator.

When using the “site:” operator, it is important not to reach conclusions to apply to normal rankings of resources, as the results of a query with a “site:” operator are following a different set of rules.

This post is the English translation of a chapter of the italian ebook “Mitologia SEO” written by Enrico Altavilla.