Flawed theory?

efforts to clean up my google listing

[toughturkey]

I have been buried in G' serps for months, although I do great with Y and MSN. When I do a site search on G I get a ton of outdated supplementary results and some www/non-www duplicate content.

So since I have nothing to lose I plan on using the remove tool, followed by the submit feature in an attempt to start over. This will remove all the garbage associated with the domain, and in 6 months I'll have nothing but clean high ranking results.

Is there anything I am missing with this theory? or has anyone successfully cleaned up their results?

[lufc1955]

Seems like a risky gamble to me doing it your way. Surely its best to clean up your site by deleting from your server any pages you dont want and making any other changes you deem are required. Then just wait for Google to realise you have made changes and see what happens.

[longen]

Run Xenu - it may reveal a mess, bad links, orphan files, etc.

[toughturkey]

I've tried cleaning it up for months, but the supp. results don't ever go away. I admit this is a last ditch effort, but in 6 months we'll see.

[lammert]

Never use the removal tool to fix the www/non-www problem. Members have several times reported--and GoogleGuy has confirmed--that removing one of the two URLs will also remove the other URL.

Supplemental results do not really hurt. They make a mess of the site: searches, but sometimes I get traffic through supplemental results when people are searching the web for very obscure phrases. This however is only true if the supplemental URLs point to a still existing page, or are properly 301 redirected to a page with appropriate content.

My experience is that the existence itself of supplemental URLs does neither hurt nor help the ranking of the other pages of the same website, unless these supplementals contain duplicate content from other still existing pages. This is the only circumstance where I would recommend the URL removal tool.

[martinibuster]

If you are concerned about the site in your profile, you belong in supplemental if you don't have any original and useful content.

[toughturkey]

If you are concerned about the site in your profile, you belong in supplemental if you don't have any original and useful content.

<licking wounds>

[balam]

rubber neckers

Chuckle... :)

[wiseapple]

Never use google removal tool... Everything that you think you have removed will just show back up in the serps six months later. It is not really a "removal" tool. It is a "hide" tool. You will still be haunted in six months.