Supplemental Results: What exactly are they

[vite_rts]

< For those who are completely new to this topic, Google sometimes returns
a listing on their search results page marked "Supplemental Result' in green
letters. Such results, taken from Google's separate "Supplemental Index" are
the topic of this thread. >

Hi Guys who know

1, Supplemental pages also get cached, I see this

2, Why does a page get marked as supplemental

3, How are supplemental pages treated during keyword search by web user using google search

4, Do supplemental pages get re-spidered

5, Are changes to supplemental pages re cached

6, Does a page stop being supplemental as soon as google system has fresh spider cache to re evaluate the page eg. directory pages initially light on content but now filled with human edited enteries

7, Are the anecdotal stories of 1 year supplemental status true :-)

Cheers

[edited by: tedster at 10:09 am (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]

[aubuchon]

steveb: "having a hidden supplemental basically always hurts the ranking of a healthy page."

IF URL 1 is a supplemental result for non-supplemental URL 2 (b/c of a redirect), does URL 1 only hurt the ranking of URL 2, or can it affect the ranking of the whole site in general?

g1smd: "capitalisation issues"

Capitalization in URLs can create duplicate content problems?

Pirates: I think sites that are finding what they believe are good pages go supplemental should take a look at shopping sites that are also targeting there keyword.

Has anyone experienced a duplicate content penalty for distributing product content to PPC shopping sites? Is it good practice to tweak the datafeeds for these sites to minimize the chance for duplicate content penalties?

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide in clarifying these questons.

[edited by: tedster at 2:06 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2006]

[JayDev]

I submitted a site with about 300 pages of extremely unique content about two months ago. My traffic is non-existing and all pages but the home page are "supplemental results". The amount of indexed pages varies on a weekly basis. Each page includes at least 1,000 words of unique content and unique images.

Is there anything going on at Google? I have heard from large firm executives that they are starting to exclude Google from their advertising model. Anyway, this is a sidenote but more light on those "supplemental results" would be well appreciated. (It is time for other engines to get a bigger piece of the pie).

[edited by: JayDev at 2:56 am (utc) on Dec. 26, 2006]

[tedster]

The one form of Supplemental Result that has been growing in a most sigificant way is what the quote from Matt Cutts refered to (see the second post in this thread) - urls with low PR.

You mentioned submitting your site to Google, but you didn't mention links from other sites -- that is what has long been required for good indexing, and now also for not being tagged as Supplemental.

[JayDev]

Thanks for the feedback. I do have some incoming one way links from pages PR5 or better. Only a few however. In addition, I have a quite a few low PR incoming links (one way).

I guess the Google dance continues. Let's hope that fewer and fewer people will be willing to dance!

[photopassjapan]

I don't think i can recall any supplemental pages that weren't PR0.

Except where...
...the URL in the index became a redirect to somewhere else...
...URL in the index was a duplicate... ( canonical issues for example, you know, www vs non-www )
...same URL was listed twice in the index, only that one was older and supplemental.

[Marcia]

I've got a site that's PR4 on the homepage with most of the rest of the pages PR3 and all Supplemental.

I believe there's an inherited problem with that domain name from before I bought it. From day one there's been a problem with it not coming up for a search on the site name.

[Frederic1]

I know a PR7 site which is nearly 100% supplemental.

I have a PR5 site with many PR4 pages which is also nearly 100% supplemental.

[photopassjapan]

Since there's got to be some reason why they become so, isn't there a possibility that these sites have or had at some point been duplicated / had the server set up wrong / were or are using redirects?

I'm just curious.

Both of you said "i've got ONE site that's..." meaning there's a pattern of low PR pages becoming supplemental, with only a FEW exceptions. So far i only saw supplementals with medium-high PR that had problems in other departments... mainly in these areas.

[g1smd]

>> >> steveb: "having a hidden supplemental basically always hurts the ranking of a healthy page." << <<

>> IF URL 1 is a supplemental result for non-supplemental URL 2 (b/c of a redirect), does URL 1 only hurt the ranking of URL 2, or can it affect the ranking of the whole site in general? <<

I think steveb refers to where a URL has content indexed in the main index, and it also has hidden data for an older version of the same page at the same URL hidden in the Supplemental index.

.

>> >> g1smd: "capitalisation issues" << <<

>> Capitalization in URLs can create duplicate content problems? <<

Sure. A URL like www.domain.com/thispage.html is a different URL to www.domain.com/ThisPage.html and is a duplicate if it serves the same content. This is a major problem for sites with Windows or IIS hosting. It only applies to the folder and filename part of the URL.

Apache is immune to ths problem.

[panther45]

From what I am reading, about how Google is supposed to work, or at least how they claim it works. All this supplemental stuff is undermining that. And making it harder for the little guy. Eventually income from Google Adsense drops. Then the shareholders get upset, heads will roll. But we just have to wait. It happens in Government the same way. They support big business, neglect the small businesses. Which in total outnumbers big business. Then in turn, using their combined weight small businesses use their influence to help throw out the government.
Google made it big on the small guy now they have lost site of it. Although people will still come out and defend Google.

[panther45]

Does anybody remember a search engine named Altavista? Just look what happened to them.