Argh. Making websites is fun, until you realize that you aren't getting much traffic and almost all of your website is in supplemental results! See the thing is, my website isn't some "Made for AdSense" site and it doesn't use other peoples articles. But, I'm hardly getting any traffic from Google (or any other search engines for that matter). Most of my pages are supplemental results. I have pages with a list of items and descriptions. These items link to pages specifically for that item, and with the same descriptions. I was wondering if this counts and duplicate content, and that's what's keeping my site in supplemental results? Thanks.
duplicate content is a filter, Not a penalty. Even if google did consider it duplicate it would just filter one page out. If your site is new that may be the reason for supplimentals, Or it could be that google just doesn't think your site offers much in the way of information.
After reading that page, I'm still not sure what's wrong. "Duplicate text on multiple pages do not cause supplemental results." Hmm... well my prediction was wrong I guess. I've got the CSS in another file, probably valid XHTML, a 301 redirect...my titles are similar, but would this really cause so many of my pages to be supplemental results? The home page (index.html) has a PR or 2 I think...hmm, very annoying.
I'm really sorry for double posting, but I still haven't got a definitive answer to this question yet. Does internal duplicate content (a paragraph, not the completely same page) cause supplemental results? Thanks.
A paragraph will not be a problem of supplemental Google hell. Problems appear when you have for example an ecommerce site with many pages all practically more or less the same and very slim content. That is when you should worry.
Many pages with slim content? Check. Any ideas for getting out of this rut? I suppose I could try and increase the content, but although I do not have an ecommerce site, I do have a site in the style you described. Much like an ecommerce site (as opposed to an article site) it's not like you can write a 500 word paragraph for each page. Most of my supplemental pages have only a few real sentences, and the rest of the page is quite similar between them. My pages with more text (the pages which are a compilation of the paragraphs from the supplemental pages, with links to the items page) aren't in the supplemental results. So, what am I to do?
Can I maybe have a look at your website ? My team could offer you some consultancy if you are interested to go professional. PM me.