what is Supplemental Result?

Discussion in 'Google' started by metrixbeliver, Jul 11, 2006.

  1. #1
    what is Supplemental Result in SERPS? google shows 8000 indexed pages of my site from them 4000 are Supplemental Result what is it?
     
    metrixbeliver, Jul 11, 2006 IP
  2. cormac

    cormac Peon

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    #2
    Its supposed to be the last known good cache of your site. Many of us are seeing supplemental results and nobody is none the wiser on why this happening, only suggestion is that Google is broke and has hit us with a penalty.

    I suggest doing a "www.yoursite.com" search on Google and see if you come up number1 - one of my sites is coming up on page 4 with 10 pages in Supplemental Result :mad:
     
    cormac, Jul 11, 2006 IP
  3. mad4

    mad4 Peon

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    #3
    In theory its caused when lots of your pages are the same and google doesn't bother caching them. In practice it may be because you link to bad sites or have lots of footer links. Supplemental sites lose a lot of traffic as well.

    Make sure your pages have unique titles, meta tags, h1 tags and content.
     
    mad4, Jul 11, 2006 IP
  4. cormac

    cormac Peon

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    #4
    Oh I have but for some reason they have ditched my pages - thankfully its only ten. I wouldnt like to be in metrixbeliver shoes with 4000 in the sup results.
     
    cormac, Jul 11, 2006 IP
  5. SEOEgghead

    SEOEgghead Peon

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    #5
    Supplemental Result - ("s&-pl&-'men-t&l ri-'z&lt) A manifestation of Google's horribly broken index after Big Daddy.

    Sorry, I had to :)

    Some other notes:
    It does seem to be affecting pages with lousy footer links and spam pages, but it also seems to be nailing legitimate valuable pages. I cannot comment on whether the results are a net positive numerically. But I can state that I've been using (gasp!) MSN for some queries when Google appears to be applying off-page factors only and giving poor results.
     
    SEOEgghead, Jul 11, 2006 IP
  6. cormac

    cormac Peon

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    #6
    I have also switched to MSN for some searches - hold on did I just say that? :eek:
     
    cormac, Jul 11, 2006 IP
  7. SEOEgghead

    SEOEgghead Peon

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    #7
    I know, it's almost embarassing, right? MS is taking search very seriously, now, though. And the fact that Google is snatching Microsoft employees in itself proves that MS isn't clueless.

    Food for thought ...
     
    SEOEgghead, Jul 11, 2006 IP
  8. Vincent DiCarlo

    Vincent DiCarlo Peon

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    #8
    One of my sites took a pretty big hit on the 27th... Taking a closer look, I realized that my header, which is the same for almost every page on my site, uses the exact same meta description. (It's dynamic and pulls the meta description from a header file).

    If I typed in "site:" into G, it would only show a few pages in the SERPS.

    It considered all of my other pages to be similar to each other since they had the same meta description. Is this effect what is considered to be "supplemental"?

    As an experiment I have removed the meta description from the header... We'll see what happens.

    According to the G website this is what it says about "supplemental results":

    What's a "supplemental result?"


    A supplemental result is just like a regular web result, except that it's pulled from our supplemental index. We're able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.

    If you're a webmaster, please note that the index in which a site is included is completely automated; there's no way to select or change the index in which a site appears. Please also be assured that the index in which a site is included doesn't affect its PageRank. For tips on maintaining a crawler-friendly site, please visit http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769



    Vin
     
    Vincent DiCarlo, Jul 11, 2006 IP
  9. mvandemar

    mvandemar Notable Member

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    #9
    Where are you getting the 4000 number from?

    -Michael
     
    mvandemar, Jul 11, 2006 IP
  10. mad4

    mad4 Peon

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    #10
    Don't remove it! Just make it different for each page.
     
    mad4, Jul 12, 2006 IP