Experience with Google Sitemaps

[jmueller0823]

We implemented sitemap functionality in mid-October.

Since then, I've noticed some "interesting" numbers...

• Prior to implementing sitemap, our indexed count was 4,600
• Our count has dropped to 3,400

• Google says our sitemap-submitted url's is 18,000

Question
• Any comments on the decreased index count?
• What should my expectations be on the 18k sitemap url's? Will Google (eventually) index them?
• We have a PR of 5.

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• I reviewed our crawl status at: google | webmaster tools | manage site |
• Google says 1,300 pages are restricted by robots.txt
• Most of those pages are in one folder. Oddly, that folder is not disallowed.
• When I used the Google robots.txt Analysis, it does allow that folder.

Question
• Does this sound like an "inconsistency" with Google reading my robots file (?)
• Ideas?

Thanks all.