Supplemental results = SE doggie bag

Once a page is in SE's eternal cache you can't have it back.

[lmo4103]

Hypothetically speaking:

Every url crawled by a search engine is saved somewhere. It might get buried, unused, forgotten, ... It is highly unlikely that it will ever be actually deleted. It is in the "eternal index". On the bright side, perhaps it enables webmasters to use the Last-Modified header to limit robots to retrieve only freshly minted pages. There is a certain logic to this "eternal index" being that if a web site is down, or the page is temporarily unavailable, the search engine can still get the result. On the dark side, there are dreaded supplemental results, and this dark side is not restricted to google.

If the search engine is instructed not to index a url, then it won't be included in the "regular index". If the search engine is instructed not to cache a url, then it won't indicate that there is a "cached page" available.

Any url having been crawled that later ceases to exist or ceases to have any link pointing to it may be removed from the "regular index". Changing a url for a web page allows duplicates to "exist". Having the www and non-www also allows duplicates to "exist".

Any web page that becomes buried, forgotten, duplicated, or sufficiently defective for any reason gets to be a candidate to enter "supplemental results". If a page has a doppelganger in "supplemental results", both will fall in. A search engine would always prefer, if possible, to answer a query from the "regular index" and delve not into that deep "eternal index".

Some web pages have inexplicably emerged from "supplemental hell" and others have inexplicably fallen in.

Some suggestions have been:
be happy that you have any results
don't worry
wait
delete pages
robots.txt
301 redirects
adopt orphaned web pages
remove duplicate content
META noindex tag
META noarchive tag
META description tags unique
start using google sitemap.xml
stop using google sitemap.xml
use removal tool
don't use removal tool
blame google
research datacenters
get a new domain
don't get a new domain
never make a mistake that might become a supplemental result

Concensus on what works:
no concensus

[tiori]

Amen.
I have given up on Google. What will be, will be. Concentrating on other search engines.

[lmo4103]

I think I said that google was not the only one with an eternal index whence some may long remain. Google only, though, indicates finding supplemental results from that place. I think I have detected msn doing the hiding thing when it knows there are results "down there". I have also seen long defunct pages coming from a site: search on yahoo.

[tedster]

You my find this reference thread interesting. It contains GoogleGuy's first comments about the Supplemental Index -- from August 2003 right after the Supplemental Results first starting appearing in the search results.

GoogleGuy on Supplemental Results [webmasterworld.com]

[Jakpot]

"Hey, 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. So it might not affect the results for a popular search, but for a researcher doing a more specific query, it can improve the recall of the results. The supplemental collection of pages has been collected from the web just like the 3.3 billion pages in Google's main index.
Hope that helps,
GoogleGuy"

Play it again Sam. LOL

[lmo4103]

In the real world, it seems, that in most searches, the supplemental results fiasco has an effect more like "eliminate from results" rather than "augment results".

And the comment

it might not affect the results for a popular search

is almost false.

[extra]

- Every url crawled by a search engine is saved somewhere. It might get buried, unused, forgotten, ... It is highly unlikely that it will ever be actually deleted. -

I don't understand this.
We have a competitor with site cashed mid january by Google. MSN and Yahoo have updated the cashed date.
But our competitor is higher than ever for most imprtant singel words. In fact they are number one for most of them in Scandinavia.
They are absolutly not buried or forgotten

[g1smd]

There are several types of Supplemental Results.

It depends on which type of result (how that URL became Supplemental and which HTTP status code the URL returns) you have as to what you need to actually do; if anything.

[UserFriendly]

I have recently changed domain, and the old domain no longer points to my new one.

What you say suggests that the old domain records should be classed in a "supplemental" cache, and that the same (duplicate) pages served from my new domain would then get cast into the pit of supplemental oblivion.

But Google is currently showing 373 pages for my domain, more than it ever has before.

Am I misunderstanding this issue?

[lmo4103]

In the past, google allegedly told what is a supplemental result.

results ... by searching a supplemental collection

[webmasterworld.com...]

Great, you put my stuff right where "The dog had made in the flower beds".

[g1smd]

I tried to cover the topic back in: [webmasterworld.com...]