New supplemental result problems?

I noticed this week that one of my best sites has dropped almost completely into the Supplemental index. Fine, it doesn't wear the whitest of hats.

Now I see that one of my client's new sites is starting to go Supplemental just as it is first starting to be indexed. There is NO reason this one should go supplemental -- all of the content is totally original, all of the pages have different content, and it is not duplicated anywhere.... yet there it goes, new pages being added to Supplemental. Google indexed about 40 pages and ranked them rather well to start. Now as it is crawling additional pages they are going immediately supplemental.

This has got to be a problem with Google, right? Anyone else seeing this on new sites with little history but a lot of original content?

 

Sorry to ask a dumb question, but how can you tell if pages are being added to the "Supplemental Index"?

Thanks,
Anita

 

Do search for site:yourdomain.com

Look for the line in green where it has the page URL and page size. Right after that it would say "Supplemental Index" -- which basically means we're never going to crawl or update this page again and it will rank much lower than it should.

 

i think you must find more backlink for yoy supplemantal pages . you can learn more about supp. pages at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34473

 

Thanks. I do know what they are and what supposedly causes them. What I'm asking about is a possibly new or recent behavior where too much is being added to the Supplementals.

A new site comes online with a few hundred pages of original content and adds more every day. Really original with text and video, not some hashed over articles. Why is a new site like that going supplemental? That would never happen in the past. It has a few quality inbounds; as much as would be expected for a new site of this size (and they are entirely natural inbounds).

 

maybe its just a trust issue. your site is new so maybe its a by product of being in the sandbox.

 

Good point, but in my experience, Google never returns to pages it has marked Supplemental. So even if the page changes or updates, the robot will never re-crawl. Maybe getting more quality inbounds will help but it seems a shitty thing to do to a new site and new domain.

The odd thing is that some pages from the domain rank really well, already beating other sites for the same keyphrases... and then similar pages (with different content) from the site get shoved in supplemental hell.

 

I'm sure you have unique meta tags...if you get outside sites to link directly to these pages then you can get them out of supplemental. I got pages out this way before. Also create a html sitemap.

 

How much content on your pages? 200 words? less? Are metatags all unique? By the way, try this: Generate Google site map, on the daily basis. Refresh it constantly and resubmit!

It helped me!

 

got the same problem on a couple sites

 

All title tags of the pages going into supplemental are unique. I tend not to use meta description any longer, but I could add it. I'm sure oseymour is right; if the pages themselves get inbounds, they would likely be recrawled, but it shouldn't be happening in the first place. The pages are over 500 chars each, on average, of unique content with unique titles. The site is for a TV station so they generate a lot of original work.

I will try a G Sitemap and report back to see whether it gets the pages in question out of supplemental. I doubt it though; G knows they are there, they have been crawled, just shuffled off into the dustbin.

Anyone else getting shoved into supplemental even though the site in question is totally legit with linking methods?

 

I have a page which went from 2880 indexed pages to 1 (main page) for about 4 months, now they have all reappeared in supplemental, despite being 301'ed to a completely different url... I really can't explain google sometimes, whatever I do seem to take effect a couple of months later.

 

Build up high PR backlinks, that definatly helps.

 

I have experience with the supplemental index. Here's the most common reasons pages end up in the supplemental index ("Google Hell"):

1) HTML page titles too similar to other pages on your site. Make your page titles unique, especially the first 25 characters.

2) META "descriptions" are too similar. Make your descriptions unique, especially the first few words.

3) Page content is too similar to other pages on your site. Watch out for duplicated side bar menus and side column content that appears on every page. Duplicated content should not be greater than unique content on each page.

4) Content on pages is duplicated on pages on other sites.

It is possible to get pages removed from the supplemental index after you make corrections but it will take at least a month until the next deep index, or longer.

 

So you're saying dont have sitewide navigation links?

 

im seeing lots of "supplemental results" like this sites from a friend
site:www.articlegear.com
site:www.articlesauce.com

and some others too.

It looks to me like it's Google issue. im not sure though.

 

I had a similar problem with a site that was all original content.

I think the site wide content issue (like side bars and footer stuff) can be sending things to Sup Index lately. Reduce any sitewide stuff to navigation links only!

I had a couple of paragraphs of content, in very small font, in the footer. I thought I was being a SEO trickster by doing this and including text links to all my major pages, using different phrases than in my Nav bar. It seemed to be working good for a number of months, then TRIP, into Sup Hell it goes. Every page but home page.

I removed all that extra sitewide crap. Got some more back links, even a few deep links to some (not all) my internal pages. And 3 weeks later all my pages came out of Sup Index. 2 weeks later they were all back in again when Google reverted to an older index for a about a week. They are all out again and have been for a few weeks now.

 

Have had similiar problems with a very new site(also unique content and everything). First homepage only indexed then all other pages went into supplemental, after a few weeks everthing was sorted nicely and now the website ranks in the google index

 

I have an innovative offering at my Ask Directory that I think helps pages getting away from supplemental results, it’s a 500 words original article at the detail page of the listings with 5 or 10 deep links included on the content (ex. Aviva, Blog, Horses)

 

i feel your pain... i was out of supplemental for a while, then for no reason put right back in. I run a news site with many pages added daily, of unique content. I do not have meta descriptions anymore, taking them off as advised and that seemed to get me out of supplemental, but recently I've gone back in..


Also, even though each article has a unique title and page, google is providing me with innappropriate titles of my links when i do a site command, even though there are titles present on each article page that is creqated.

Im just waiting for them to fix themselves as I'm sure they will eventually.