What's thedifference between Supplemental Result and url only results?

[SEO_Report]

Hi All,

The title say it all, anyone knows the answer?

Thanks!
-k

[powerfulponder]

I don't have an exhaustive answer, but this is what I have found to be true through trial and error on two large websites.

The supplemental index contains:
-Pages that are orphaned.
-Pages that now send a 301 to another page with different content. If the content on the new page is the same, G will remove the old URL completely. But if it's different G still wants that old content.

URL Serps:
-Links that G picked up but isn't allow to crawl (noindex contraits, etc.). Hints a link but no content.
-Links that G suspects are duplicates.

[martinibuster]

Good list. Here's another one to add to it:
Links that for one reason or another could not be crawled, i.e. dynamic links with long urls. In general, supplemental listings are sites that Google knows about but are not included in the index, thus, they are supplemental to the index.

And here's what it says on the Google FAQs page [google.com]:

3. Why is my site labeled "Supplemental"?

Supplemental sites are part of Google's auxiliary index. We're able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.

The index in which a site is included is completely automated; there's no way for you to select or change the index in which your site appears.

[g1smd]

>> there's no way for you to select or change the index in which your site appears <<

Is there any way to get the page permanently out of the supplemental index?

I helped a friend remove his email address from multiple sites that were publishing it. After the pages were cached again by Google the situation is that if you search for keywords that are in the "normal" content on the page you get that page show in the SERPs and it is NOT a supplemental result. The cache is new and the snippet is new.

If you search for the page using the email address as the search query (remembering that the page no longer contains the email address) then there are two sorts of pages found in the SERPs:

1. Results where the snippet still contains the email address and the cached page is from 9 to 18 months old - and the result is marked supplemental, and

2. Results where the snippet still contains the email address that was removed a year ago, but the cache is just a few weeks old and of course the email address is nowhere to be seen in the cache. Again these results are usually marked as supplemental when searching for the email address (but the same page will return as NOT supplemental when you search using keywords in the current content of that page).

Generation of snippets is not always linked to whatever is claimed to be in the cache for any particular page...

[bumpski]

I made a post, sitting in the "waiting room", along this same topic line. Not knowing whether it will ever trickle through, I'll ask again in this thread.

Is there any way to filter results based upon the supplimental attribute? Showing supplimental results only, or non-supplimental results only?

This would be very useful in some of my investigations regarding scraping and outright copying of content.

g1:
I have pages in a similar state as you mention. A "not" seatch for a string that should be present in the page's content today brings forth a "supplimental" snippet from an older version of the page, probably from a time when the "not" search was valid, but the cache shown has the string in question present. The cache page does not meet the original search criteria! Actually searching for the string returns a normal snippet and cache content. Fortunately for me this page still does quite well in the SERPS, but I wonder what impact this type of dual listing might have?
By the way this is not a www vs non-www issue, the URL for the page in the normal index and supplimental index is identical. The page's description metatag which I believe Google used in both cases was alightly different for the two results. The supplimental result had an older very slightly different description.

Google can use the supplimental index to locate scraped content. In most cases scrapers take your Titles and copy them into their content. Google may actually be recording Titles and searching for duplicates in the content pages, perhaps based on additional criteria, marking these pages as supplimental. Seems like this wouldn't be possible, but there also seems to be circumstantial evidence of this feat.

I have thousands of scraped Titles showing in searches. I'd say 95 percent of these scraped pages using copies of my Titles are marked as supplimental, actually quite an excellent result. With the type of search I use for this, almost all the results are supplimental. I'd like see just the results that aren't supplimental! I need the "-supplimental" filter.

[g1smd]

>> Is there any way to filter results based upon the supplimental attribute? Showing supplimental results only, or non-supplimental results only? <<

I sometimes see results with absolutely ZERO Supplemental Results within. It appears that one datacentre somewhere in Google might only have the "normal" index, or maybe another theory I posted last year (but which gained little attention or response) has merit:

When I get the SERP with zero supplemental results within, then the "time" for the results to be returned is always more than (something like) 0.80 seconds. For a normal search it is usually 0.03 to 0.40 seconds. Maybe the extra time is the failure to retrieve any Supplemental Results from the alternative database within some maximum timeframe - so Google returns a SERP without them...

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