I need some general info, but let me go off this example. 1) had a site in google with about 52,500 pages, indexed 2) beginning of 2006 it starts dropping 3) last 5 months ALL pages are supplemental 4) Changed URL scheme to clean urls, added unique meta's 5) Added about 300,000 new pages. 5) Got some high PR links... (Between steps 3 and 4 I added some random content and some other stuff (which I consider crappy) but I was hoping to get the SEs to think that they should index me. I'm concerned that all the new pages will go supplemental too.) So, generally, you have a site that has gone completely supplemental.. but you fix a lot of it's issues, get a few high PR links. Which causes the index and a handful of pages come out of supplemental what kind of time frame are you looking at before google indexes it completely? Google is crawling... about 20,000 pages a day, before it would barely break 200. If it doesn't completely come back, when should you decide that you have more problems that need to be fixed and start thinking about having someone look at it? Thanks.
There are 2 main reasons I found for supplementals. One is duplicate content (internal or external) and the other is lack of trust for that page (some would call it page rank). It shows that Google does not think that you think that page is important to your website. If you have a bunch of very similar pages like user profiles this could be one issue. More than likely though it's your linking structure. You will need some very strong trust to have enough to pass around to that many pages without them going supplemental. I think you kind of screwed yourself with adding 300,000 pages. That screams spam. If you are talking about your nddb website, you are doubly screwed. Most of your pages are very similar with no reviews and your domain is no where near strong enough to support those pages. Even a site as strong as SEOmoz.org has around 15K supps and they grew naturally and has one of the best link profiles around. Trying to prevent all supps for a site like your is fruitless. I would not change url's again because most of your urls will go supp again.
Yea, I don't expect to get them all out of supplemental, for sure. I guess the fact that the index is out is good. It would be cool if at least the pages with content would come out, perhaps they will. Just don't know how long it will take, if it will happen at all. Those supplementals are brutal, I used to have a PR5 just off the co-op, but since everything dropped out of the API, I'm down to PR1 now.. ouch.
Yikes.. lol. Well thanks for the info, I just will try not to worry about supplemental too much and hope at least some of the new pages avoid being sent to supp hell. =)
What's the lesson? Don't depend on co-op? Or don't depend on google? I think it was really the big daddy update. Backlinks and traffic snowballed up as co-op added weight, and everything was indexed in the API more and more... after a while, it all snowballed downward... stuff just gradually dropped out of the API, co-op fell.. backlinks fell, stuff fell out of the API... etc etc.. down to PR 1 with like no traffic, till now.
pretty sure that's a co-op thing, not a google thing the co-op should never be your only source of incoming links for any important site.
The lesson that I was referring to was the one that disgust mentioned ... it's dangerous to rely solely on the co-op for rankings. There have been other co-op members who have made posts similar to yours. I'm not trying to be a smart-ass or anything, I just trying to point out how easy it is to develop a false sense of security when your backlinks and rankings are rising. It's great while it lasts, but anything that is dependent solely upon the mercurial algorithims of Google is fragile at best. If you had submitted your website to 400 free directories (or paid someone at DP $40 to do it for you), you would have probably achieved a PR 4 on your own. You would have not dropped to a PR 1 when all your pages went supplemental. Once the co-op got you to a PR 5, it would have been a perfect time to start going after as many PR 5 reciprocal links as possible. Again, it would be your "insurance" against any bad luck. Good luck with your link building.
Yea, I agree. I guess I should submit to some more free directories. If I had more cash I'd buy a few more PR7 links. =)