Google's Supplemental Results Having Issue!

Why is Google adding a trailing "/"

[jbgilbert]

Just happened to do a site: command on one of my sites and found that any pages that are in the "supplemental results" have a trailing "/" appended to them!

This is creating havoc for me and MUST be an inadvertant error on Google's part.

Pages are supposed to be www.domain.com/page.html, etc,
BUT, there are bring shown as:
www.domain.com/page.html/ <-- see the stupid trailing "/"?

Clicking on the links in the supplemental results does not even render the pages properly because the trailing "/" is screwing up the css include!

Personally, I think Google is making WAY too many silly errors lately. It's bad enough that they have a 301 mess and won't discuss it, but adding trailing "/"s to the Supplemental Result URLs? Please... Come on now....

[ari11210]

I see the same thing with my site, and those pages do not render correctly either for both CSS and PHP reasons. I dont know why google is doing that, I just assumed it found the link like that on another page that had a typo. Let me know if you find anything out about this.

[jbgilbert]

Thanks for any and all confirmations that this is a real issue.

I have contacted Google, but probably will not get a response very quickly. If I do get a response, I will share it.

Since my first post, I have found even more issues with the Supplemental Results... for example the site www.domain123.com has MANY pages in the Supplemental Results that look like this:

www.domain123.com/a-page-name.html/another-page-name.html

This is not even a valid URL! Nevermind that the pages don't even exist on the site.

Anybody else seeing this really ugly stuff?

[Wizard]

Isn't you CSS rendered wrong because you used relative addressing? I can display my pages with '.html/' and they display correctly - I have absolute URL addressing in HTML and CSS.

But I see another issue here - if my server (Apache) returns page for both '/file.html' and '/file.html/', there is a danger of duplicate content penalty. My competitor could theoretically put links to my files with '.html/' on high PR page and cheat Google that this is canonical URL, throwing my correct URLs from the results!

[Nikke]

throwing my correct URLs from the results

Isn't that just a wee bit paranoid?

Sure, you will have duplicate pages, but unless your own site is completely unspidered, your original (correct) url will be older, and more heavily linked. The proof for this is that these pages are tagged as belonging in the supplemental index. I run a few sites where there are several ways to reach the same page, and just about every one of the 2500 unique pages have something between 25 and 30 different URLs. Most of them are spidered by Google, and at least one of of these URLs actually rank OK.

Still, adding a non-existant slash to urls is a blatant error, and the fact all these crazy mixups actually gets into the (the supplemental) index and stays there is nothing but a waste of time for everybody.

[jbgilbert]

Wizard

Isn't your CSS rendered wrong because you used relative addressing?

YES....., but it would work normally if the URLs were not messed up in the Supplemental Index.

Wizard

But I see another issue here - if my server (Apache) returns page for both '/file.html' and '/file.html/', there is a danger of duplicate content penalty.

You are absolutely correct. There can be A LOT OF ISSUES associated with the messed up URLs in the Supplemental Index. Like why the heck are the pages in there to begin with? Is it because Google has already indexed 2 versions the right one and the wrong one with the trailing "/"?

I have even considered getting some help in re-directing all the problem URLs in Google's Supplemental Index for my site, but with all the "alleged" 301 problems being reported (and all the work and cost involved), I'm not sure that is the right approach. First, I need to get Google to look at the issue, admit there is a problem and correct it -- that would be the logical approach... right?

Paranoid... somebody said?

Has nothing to do with being paranoid. It's tough enough these days to provide good sites, with enough unique content to satisfy Google and achieve any kind of rankings, so it's hard to be tolerant when the problem is created by Google and not me.

See, I can talk to myself, kick myself in the butt, correct my ways, fix my problems -- but when Google has a problem, I can't do a darn thing.

And this is a real problem!

[zeus]

I also think its a shame that SO many sites are hurt the last years time by googles mistakes, there has NEVER been so much talk about errors on google like the last years time, about hijacking, 302,301,wrong domain, supplementals,omitted results to soon and much more, I remeber the good times, when you made a site and it was indexed and ranked in the serps, NOTHING could hurt your site from the outside.

Now you have to be a PRO webmaster to get a site to stay on google, so those beginner sites or family sites, those have no chances.

[crobb305]

I was posting about this just a few days ago...Interesting to see you are having the same problem with urls being indexed in the form filename1.html/filename2.html ...I was beginning to think this was an asp problem on my server.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[stargeek]

a site that had every page thrown into the supplemental index doesn't have this issue.

[jbgilbert]

crobb305... looks like your post is in the pay area only, so I can't check it. But, I am glad to hear the problem is real and not just imagined by me!

Care to summarize what you had already posted?

Still no reply from Google on this issue... darn I hope they look at this... it is REALLY messed up... I'm searching for and finding more and more sites with the same problem.

I went through one exercise with Google trying to get some Supplemental Results removed from their index and I'll tell you it was a long and laborious effort. really don't want to have to consider that again.