Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
any ideas? hope google hasn't disabled this function for good..
It does work, although it looks like is shows a small number of non supplemental results first. Not sure why....
To be honest, I hope it isn't true that they'll drop it. There are some good reasons for it, and it can provide some very helpful information for webmasters (and SEOs).
[edited by: Marcia at 7:56 am (utc) on July 26, 2007]
If they do that, they will still have a Supplemental Index, and they will still show results from it.
However, no one will be able to see which index the results are actually coming from. That WILL be a Black Box.
In that post at SEOmoz Cutts came in and commented. He stated people are concentrating on it to much, like the early days of PR. So they made TBPR only update every 3-4 months. Now sup pages can't be found with a query.
I feel this is a terrible comparison, and webmasters have a very valid reason to see which pages do not rank. TBPR is one thing, but a supped page is something worth noting and assessing, bottom line.
That's the same as: your server is offline 80% of the time, yeah you concentrate way too much on your server uptime. Supplementals are one of the most important parts of your website, you should concentrate getting pages out all the time, purchasing links or whatever.
[edited by: SEOPTI at 10:48 pm (utc) on July 26, 2007]
I hope it isn't true that they'll drop it.
I'm glad you can afford the drop in traffic. I can't.
Since the beginning of this year about a third of my pages across all sites have gone supplemental. Most are niche pages but used to bring in traffic. But more importantly if a middle-level page goes supplemental all the lower pages seem to follow eventually. Also pages which were #1 in serps for a keyword phrase now that they are supplemental are completely missing for a normal search, and can only be found if the phrase is put in quotes. But how many searchers think to do that? The page might as well not exist.
Supplemental pages do not help the users. For example for one specific 3-keyword phrase (a tourist attraction) there are only two pages on the web - one in Wikipaedia and mine, but mine is now supplemental so the user never sees it unless he knows enough about the web to put the search phrase in quotes.
I agree the problem is probably navigational, but its also related to the superficial way Google now calculates PR. If there are too many internal links for Google to analyse PR quickly some pages get dropped. This I believe hits low-PR sites most of all.
site:http://www.domain.com/&
The numbers on a large site, though, are way different from what I was seeing in mid-June using the *** -asdf syntax... higher in one case by a factor of 3; lower in another case by a factor of 10.
Still, very useful (while it lasts).
One can also check supplement results through site:yoursite.com *-abcde
zohaibahmed - We posted almost at the same time, so when I saw your post, I immediately check out the syntax you suggested (which is basically the old syntax noted above), just in case Google had re-enabled it.
On my tries, anyway, it doesn't appear to work, whereas the /& syntax does return low PR pages marked as Supplemental.
Does anyone have an analysis of these two methods... the old syntax with the **** characters and the -asdf exclusion string, and the new with a "&" file search (that doesn't exist)?
And why does "&" work when some other characters don't?
Given there's no shortage of "placeholder" pages there (the type of "content" I assume the supplementary index was designed for), then the "&" isn't all that hot.
Better than nothing though
Well it's showing to me:
URL: [google.co.in...]
search query: site:www.google.com ***-slktf
It helps in debugging spidering issues
Yes, it shows if a site has a navigation problem. But I think it also highlights Google's shortcomings in working out page PR.
Google seems to be taking shortcuts in working out PR, possibly by only taking account of a certain number of links per page. So a lower-level page may not get the PR that it would have done if Google had done a thorough calculation. And I suspect pages that fall below a certain level of PR meet one of Google's criteria for Supplemental status.
This hits low PR sites where one would expect to find many low-level pages with a PR of 1 or 2. From my own experience many of these now get greyed out and go supplemental. The effect is cumalative because their links no longer count and other pages begin to drop of the radar.
I don't know if I'm right in this, but I can't just wait around hoping my pages will return, so I have been forced to greatly simplify my navigation to make it Google friendly. Unfortunately this is at the expense of usability - no more nav bars for instance.
I don't know if I'm right in this, but I can't just wait around hoping my pages will return, so I have been forced to greatly simplify my navigation to make it Google friendly. Unfortunately this is at the expense of usability - no more nav bars for instance.
Somehow I find it very hard to grow organic traffic. I am now getting most traffic from referrals anyways and its a continuing trend.
I am shifting my attention a bit towards a pleasant user experience and turning visitors into fans and loyal followers.
For that matter, i don't care as much about Google anymore.
