Calculating the Number of Google Supplementals for a Site

Is this math correct?

[Whoa]

We have a site with 2038 articles.

When I look at Google search results via site:www.domain.com, I am only able to look at 1000 results, per usual.

Starting at #990, there are ten supplemental results.

Can I infer from this that #1001 to #2038 are also all supplemental.

In other words, can I infer that my only non-supplemental pages are #1 to #989?

Thanks.

[Whoa]

Any help?

I gather from Matt Cutts that supplementals just need more pagerank to get out of supplemental purgatory.

I'm trying to isolate my supplementals and then work on getting them some links.

I know some smart person in this big room knows the answer to my question.

[jonrichd]

I don't think you can make that assumption for the purposes you want to use it (e.g. to determine which pages need additional links to boost their rankings). I believe it's been established that a page that may show up as supplemental for one search may show up as a normal result for another.

You've essentially done a search for any page on your site, and Google has shown you almost 1000 results before saying 'here's plenty of pages from example com, you should be able to find what you're looking for among these 990+'.

I would think a better way to approach your rankings issue would be to do a search for the terms you think your pages should show up for, and see if you rank. If not, then start thinking about content, anchor text, and external links -- good, old-fashioned SEO.

Another approach would be to look at your logs to determine which pages are drawing Google referrals. Pages that don't would be good candidates for links.

[Whoa]

That is awesome feedback. Thanks!

[bumpski]

Another thing you can do with site: is add subdirectories to the path:
site:www.example.com/exampledir1/exampledir2/
Now you've limited your analysis to only that subdirectory tree.
I don't know what happens with supplemental results when you use this method, but at least you can break your site down a bit.

Whenever I search webmaster world I always append to the search site:www.webmasterworld.com/google/ or whatever forum I'm looking for.

Maybe tomorrow you'll be able to do this search:
site:www.webmasterworld.com/google/ 1122ABCD3425 [google.com]

And find this post! < because of the unique string 1122ABCD342 >

[edited by: tedster at 6:16 pm (utc) on Dec. 6, 2006]
[edit reason] fix side scroll [/edit]

[tedster]

It's good to remember that the "number of pages" Google shows is only an estimate. They did some work this past summer to improve that estimate in the case of site: queries, but because of the way their data is sharded, the number will never be a "you can bet on this" number to use for serious analysis.

If you add the supplemental index into the mix, I doubt there's much we can assume beyond the 1,000 results event horizon.

[Frederic1]

I gather from Matt Cutts that supplementals just need more pagerank to get out of supplemental purgatory

I have a PR5 site that's been stuck in the supplemental index for months :'( ... I know a PR7 site which is also supplemental.

I would love Google to tell us how to get out of supplementals when the site has good PR, no dups, and no canonical issues.

[vite_rts]

@frederic

as a matter of interest, are the supplemental urls

product pages

directory pages

[Frederic1]

directory pages

[vite_rts]

methinks thats your answer, most directories i can see on the net seem to have a majority of their pages supplemental

indeed , its understandable

can you mention a directory other than dmoz which is not mostly supplementary? It would be good to see what they're doing different

[bumpski]

DMOZ doesn't have Adsense!
DMOZ doesn't have affiliate links!

(And the category I tried to get into, amazingly, has virtually the same number of listings as two years ago! Same Editor Too! No growth on the Internet.) (Oh, and yes, I have tried to become an editor.)

Just in the last couple of days for several of my sites the number of supplementals has dropped significantly. I think Google has made a substantial change.

But I still have a couple pages in the penalty box.
Penatly Box: Non-supplemental pages following the supplemental listings when using:
site:www.example.com [google.com]

www.example.com has a supplemental listing! But, nothing in the Penalty Box.