Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
?ukasz Rogala: You can get more out of Google if you will do "keyword" site:domain.com instead of only site command used.
Jenny Halasz: yes. Google officially said it doesn`t work anymore, but Maile Ohye (formerly of Google) said it "gives inaccurate results" as long ago as SMX Advanced 2015, so that`s not a surprise.
?ukasz Rogala: But as stated Google - data from GSC is more accurate when it comes to indexation issues.
Alan Bleiweiss: the site: tool is very helpful in how it doesn`t work. Meaning that the functionality is flawed in a way that actually reveals valuable insights, at least in my experience doing audits for a living. For example, if your GSC index count shows 50,000 URLs, and a site: check shows 150,000 URLs, that`s almost guaranteed to indicate there`s critical confusion with indexation signals (typically due to URL parameter or near identical / near duplicate content pages on a large scale).
Michael Stricker: The data falls apart, the deeper you go. It doe NOT include every URL from the site that is presently indexed, though it is hard to imagine a better way to at least get a snapshot. Google (Mueller?) claimed the order of the results have no particular reason, but I`ve found that some signals can be read there, too. Old URLs may stay in the index a long time.