g1smd - 8:46 pm on Oct 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

>> seeing urls tagged as Supplemental MAY BE a problem <<

Supplemental Results that return a "200 OK" when you do a search for words that form a part of the current page content are the ones with a problem.

Supplemental Results that represent the previous version of the content at a URL, or which represent a URL that is now a redirect, or is 404, or is on an expired domain, are not a problem.

.

>> GoogleGuy: "the supplemental results are a new experimental feature to augment the results for obscure queries. This is a new technology that can return more results for queries that for example have a small number of results.
[webmasterworld.com...] <<

Those extra results are of several main types:
- Many are simply for any URLs that are duplicate content of the stuff already listed as normal results.
- They are also for URLs that have been redirecting, or are 404, or have domains that have expired sometime in the last year or so, and which have old content that matched your search term.
- They are also for URLs where Google has stored the current page content as a normal result and the previous content of the page as a Supplemental result.
- The last type are pages that have been deemed "unimportant" as they have low PR, few inbound links, and live somewhere on the periphery of the web.

The first three types of Supplemental Results allow you to see old content, content that no longer exists live on the web, via the Google cache.

[edited by: g1smd at 9:01 pm (utc) on Oct. 29, 2006]

[edited by: engine at 2:30 pm (utc) on Oct. 31, 2006]
[edit reason] added link [/edit]