Submitted to Sitemaps

now 1/2 coming back as "In order to show you the most relevant results...

[textex]

We ad new content daily. We had about 85% of the site indexed in Google and decided to submit a sitemap to get the rest of the site indexed quicker.

The remaining pages have been indexed but we now get "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 'x' already displayed.

Why would this happen?

The pages are all 100% handwritten unique content with different titles and descriptions.

[Quadrille]

How much unique content, compared to the code load?

Take a look at the source code of an 'average page'

[textex]

The only thing that is common amongst the pages is the navigation.

[ashear]

Is it possible that you may have dupe url's in your feed with trailing characters? If the list is long enough it could be an easy mistake.

[textex]

I did some digging and noticed that some competitors with similar site structure are hurting as well.

I have lots of folders with pages in these folders.

Seems like this is an issue?!

[netmeg]

I think Google recently turned up the filter on this - I'm getting a LOT more filtered results these days. Doesn't seem to hurt the traffic, and the pages do show up for specific searches. I'm sure it's a matter of percentages, and I haven't figured out exactly what the right percentage is yet.

[fishfinger]

If you're referring to what you see when you use the site: command and see that lots of your site's pages are Supplemental (and you don't have any duplicate issues), then page 'uniqueness' or 'quality of content' is not the issue - it's your link profile.

To get more pages out of the Supplemental index into the main one you need more trusted links. Best way to do this is to get quality links directly to the pages that are Supplemental. This will not only help them individually but help your site as a whole.

[netmeg]

I don't think this is supplementals, I think this is filtered results.

[AndyA]

Quadrille wrote:

How much unique content, compared to the code load?
Take a look at the source code of an 'average page'

Could someone go into this a bit further? Vanessa Fox said to not worry about the code in a recent interview. What is a safe ratio of code to content, and how long does it take to notice changes once you clean up the code?

For instance, if you start with a page that's 24kb and without removing any of the content, clean up the code to bring the html down to around 10kb, is that a good indication that your site might be suffering due to too much unnecessary code?

[Quadrille]

If you do not use templates, server side includes or a database, then code bloat - or any kind of size issue will likely not arise.

But take a site template. It may have common titles, headers, footers, navigation and much else besides. Look at the page source, and there may be two of three feet of code, that is common to every page.

And in amongst it, on some sites, some 50-100 words of copy, described by the webmaster as 'unique content' - and the page as a 'unique page'. Leaving identical titles and meta tags aside for the moment, it is not unreasonale of Google to see such a page as little different to its 5000 siblings.

Code bloat is a major cause of 'duplicate content issues', because it makes differences (relatively) smaller.

Tragically, I know of no way to quantify the ratio or absolute amount of genuine unique copy needed, but common sense can see Google's POV!

If you suspect the problem - or supplementary listing suggest it is a factor, then it can easily be dealt with, depending on the site:

1. Add more copy to each page.

2. Merge two small pages (eg red widgets + green widgets = Widgets)

3. Reduce code bloat
(i) Take out css and js to separate files
(ii) Reduce navigation from whole site to 'local' and section indexes
(iii) Cut out sloganeering and repetitive promos
(iv) Use more css, and fewer HTML markups
(v) Simplify layout+ to reduce code-heavt table formations
(vi) Look long and hard at whatever is left!

This doesn't just help SEs, it helps visitors too; it makes for a cleaner, more elegant, less crowded, more reader-friendly site!

And for those on dialup - they see the page before Christmas!

[AndyA]

Thanks Quadrille. I use a template, but not for every page, and it was one that I created, not one that came with an HTML editor. Some pages on my site were built long ago with a WYSIWYG editor, and I'm shocked now that I understand more about HTML how sloppy the coding is. Lots of redundant and unnecessary code.

So far, I've been able to take a 47Kb page and reduce it to 14Kb! And yes, it does load much quicker.

I appreciate the additional info.