What should the itemcount property in SQL Server match

Question

If the itemcount property does not exactly match the number of indexed rows is that a problem? Is there a numerical way I can ensure that I have a complete full-text-index?

update: the property fulltextcatalogproperty('database','itemcount') does not equal the rowcount for the indexed tables. It is off by a few thousand. Does that indicate the index is missing information, or would you expect that itemcount to not exactly match?

Answer 1

In SQL Server 2008, ItemCount won't count records that the FULLTEXT index does not index (NULL, empty, or those containing only the word separators)

Also, when your table is changed heavily, ItemCount can lag and not reflect the changes to the table immediately.

This is a statistical property which only serves as a hint, not as exact value.