Why would a Supplemental Result rank above a Non-Supplemental Result?

It seems illogical

[frakilk]

My understanding of a Supplemental Result is that it is a result that gets returned when there is simply nothing better to show from a particular domain. It is the last gasp that a domain can muster up.

Why then for some searches that feature my domain I see a Supplemental Result appearing above a non-Supplemental Result that is indented? Also I see a lot of Supplemental Results containing the search phrase in the body ranking before/in place of a non-Supplemental Result that contains the search phrase in title and H1 text.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Surely it has to be screwy.

[Whitey]

I'm also wondering what's happening on the logic of the results as well from a different angle, although Supps and non Supps seem a bit odd to me as well.

- you might want to be aware of this thread i started [webmasterworld.com...] which also questions the resutlts that are being served on exact and broad match

It would be great if we someone could provide some insight into these result issues.

[steveb]

Google is not perfect.

[rustybrick]

But I doubt this happens for a normal (non-navigational) type of search...

If you have solid examples, please PM me with them.

[trinorthlighting]

I have seen supplemental results outrank regular. But I have only seen it with very long keyword searches such as: "blue widgets that are in houston texas"

In that case you might get a supplemental result of houston texas widgets and the next result could just be a regular one about widgets.

[frakilk]

Why then for some searches that feature my domain I see a Supplemental Result appearing above a non-Supplemental Result that is indented? Also I see a lot of Supplemental Results containing the search phrase in the body ranking before/in place of a non-Supplemental Result that contains the search phrase in title and H1 text.

Apologies guys I don't know what I was on when I wrote that post. I meant:

"Why then for some searches that I see a Supplemental Result appearing above a non-Supplemental Result? Also I see a lot of results containing the search phrase in the body ranking before/in place of a result that contains the search phrase in title and H1 text."

I have seen supplemental results outrank regular. But I have only seen it with very long keyword searches such as: "blue widgets that are in houston texas"

In that case you might get a supplemental result of houston texas widgets and the next result could just be a regular one about widgets.

trinorthlighting -
Yes it does seem to only happen for long searches and I like your theory. It's very odd to see Supps appearing above normal results but it could be that they try to answer their initial understanding of the query with the results they have (including Supps) and then switch to a secondary set of results which are normal results. Therefore normal results would appear below Supps. Good thinking.

[g1smd]

I tried to cover the different types of Supplemental Results over there: [webmasterworld.com...]