Supplemental Results?

what does this mean?

[textex]

I know what supplemental means but I am quite confused.

I have a site that I have not been able to get into Google SERPS for about 5 months.

When I search for the url, it is listed in Google. When I click on the links button, there are no results. When I click on the contains the term button, I get results from some of the links I have exchanged with as well as inner pages from the site. The inner pages from the site all have the "supplemental results" next to it.

This site has a good amount of links pointing to it.

This site did have a previous owner.

I did run an adwords campaign with this site. Is the site possibly banned b/c of the previous owner and the only reason why the index is showing and inner pages with supplemental next to it b/c Google is still spidering due to the adwords campaign I ran?

Any input is helpful!

[g1smd]

Supplemental results are from very old data.

Often the page content has changed since indexing and the site being in that SERP therefore leads to a page that doesn't really match what you were searching for, even though the (old) snippet looks good at first glance.

[textex]

would this cause my indexing problems?

[HarryM]

Supplemental pages are also often orphan pages. To test, click on the linking page and navigate to the site's home page. Then try to reverse the process and navigate back to the original page. This is often impossible, and spiders are also going to have the same difficulty.

Typically this is due to the page only being linked to the home page by a search facility, but also I found one site which had an intermediary page with so many links on it (several thousand) that the page wouldn't even load.

Harry

[HarryM]

Sorry my last post didn't answer your question.

First if the Supplemental Results pages are from your own site, I would check your linking structure to make sure Googlebot can navigate to them.

Second the only backlinks that will show in Google are ones coming from a PR4 or higher page. There is a Link Popularity Check tool on the web which allows you to check the backlinks other search engines see (always more than Google reports).

Third I would check your logs to see if Google is spidering your site.

Harry

[textex]

Pages are not orphan pages. Navigation of entire site works fine.

[textex]

Google hits the index page only. I have lots of links from PR of 4 and greater.

[HarryM]

If I were you my first priority would be to check that Google is still spidering the entire site. Checking the logs is the easiest method.

Do you use the Google toolbar? If so you can check that your pages actually have PR and are not greyed out.

You could also check that the number of pages shown in an "allinurl:" search is roughly equal to the actual number. Don't rely on the number Google initially displays which can be wrong, but go to the last page in the list and check the number there.

Another indication that your site may not be being properly spidered is if pages that show in Google are losing their snippets. Also you can look at the caches to see if they are out of date.

Harry

[HarryM]

Sorry my post crossed with yours!

If Google is only taking the index page, then this may be because your index page has low PR and so Google doesn;t bother with going any deeper. But that should correct itself over time.

Another possibility is a problem on your index page which doesn't allow Google to proceed. You could check the page validates.

I'm running out of ideas!

Harry

[g1smd]

Supplemental pages normally only appear in SERPs where there are a very low number of results returned.

Example: A page shows as a supplemental result in SERPs with only about 20 returned results for some term. Out of the 20 results, 5 of them are supplemental results. The searched-for term shows in the snippet for those 5 sites, but no longer actually appears on that page when you visit it. The search term is still on the page for the other 15 sites, the results that do not show as "supplemental". The pages that represent the 5 "supplemental" results, are correctly indexed for their new page content. Searching for some words that do appear on the current version of the real pages, shows those pages correctly listed and indexed for the current content, and in those searches the pages are NOT marked as a supplemental result.

[HarryM]

The searched-for term shows in the snippet for those 5 sites , but no longer actually appears on that page when you visit it.

Not always the case. Some pages marked "supplemental" have perfectly valid links, but they are orphans as I described earlier.

I agree they only show when there are a few results in SERPS. If you do a search on "www.domain.com", Google always initially shows a few results including the supplemental pages. But if you then click on "show all pages" you get all the results but the supplementals have gone.

[textex]

None is the case with this site.
No orphans.
No spam.
Why is the site not in SERPS and having supplemental next to pages in results?

[HarryM]

Have you checked how many of your pages are indexed in Google. You can search for 'allinurl:www.yourdomain.com', go to the last page of the results and check the number there. Does it agree with the number of actual pages?

[textex]

My privacy policy and my comments page are returned with Supplemetanl next to them and.....

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

With the rest being returned with Supplemental next to them.

Pages are not similar at all. Title has company name in every title, that is all.

Suggestions?

[HarryM]

So how many of your pages are actually listed when you click on "repeat the search with the omitted results included"? Is it the right number? Are they all listed as "supplemental"?

[textex]

They are all listed as "supplemental". But it is the correct number.

[HarryM]

One possibility is that Googlebot cannot access these pages from your home page, and therefore classes them as orphans.

You could check to see if your home page validates at W3C and also run it and a sample of other pages through the W3C link checker.

Are your links normal HREF links, or is their anything special about them such as javascript or dynamic addressing?

[textex]

I validated the links and they are ok.

I tried the markup validation for some pages and got this message:

I could not parse this document, because it does not include a DOCTYPE Declaration. A DOCTYPE Declaration is mandatory for most current markup languages and without such a declaration it is impossible to validate this document.

BUT, I tried this with sites that are listed in Google and got the same message.

[HarryM]

Basically the validator doesn't work for you because it doesn't know what standard to validate against. But the fact the link checker works must mean that W3c can read your pages, so that should be OK.

You say Google visits your index page. Is the page shown in the SERPS cache correct?

[textex]

not in serps for kw just when i search for url. cache is correct.

[Dave_T]

I ran to the same problem. My site has been up for about 7 months. PR still 0 (not greyed out) Got good enough incoming links. The first 5 months googlebot crawled the site about once every week. Out of about 120 pages google only indexed about 50 of them with correct title and description (fully indexed), the rest was only the URL got indexed, no supplemental result yet. Then they slowly removed every single pages, leaving the homepage alone. Google stop crawling.

I checked for almost about everything from JS to HTML validation to cacheability check to Last Modified setting in our server, to spam ip database.

We emailed google... got a reply saying that Google was partially indexed our site and basically saying that it is a Google's problem.

So I decided to change the file names to give a fresh look of the site, also change the site's IP number (I was running out of ideas) about 3 days ago.

Yesterday, i checked inurl:www.domainname.com and it returns almost every single old files before i renamed them with title and description (fully indexed) but with a "supplemental result" title at the end. This query also returned some renamed files but without title and description and no "supplemental result" title behind it.

I'm planning to wait till googlebot crawl again. I'll post as new discovery come in hand.

thanks

[HarryM]

I've run out of ideas, and Dave_T's experience seems to indicate it could be a Google problem.

I would email Google and enquire. I've only had to do it once, and I found them very helpful. That was google.co.uk, so I can't speak for google.com.

[Dave_T]

1 more thing to add...

My site is indexed in other engines like altavista and teoma (more than one index). So i think this is not the site's problem, it's morelikely google's problem. Googleguy, any comments on this?
Thanks...

[GodLikeLotus]

Do all your pages show "supplemental result" next to them or do you also have pages showing only the URL.

[textex]

all have supplemental

[Dave_T]

Mine, 2 has full title and description and no supplemental result. About 20 new files without title and description and no supplemental result. The rest about 70 old files (resulting in 404 error) have full title and description plus supplemental result behind it.

[g1smd]

It is my experience that pages that are listed as a supplemental result have different content on them right now, compared to what the SERP snippet suggests, and also compared to what keyword search the page actually comes up for.

"Different Content" in this context can also mean "page no longer exists but Google continues to index it".

[textex]

I am baffled!
The content is the same. The site is clean.

Would the prior ownership of this domain be causing this?
Would me running adwords prior to trying to get site ranked in SERPS cause this?