Supplemental Index

Article claims google has 'new' supplemental index. Is it new? What is it?

[michael heraghty]

Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch writes that Google has unvelied a new supplemental index.

For obscure or unusual queries, you may see some results appear from this index. They'll be flagged as "Supplemental Result" next to the URL and date that Google shows for the listing.

To see the supplemental index kicking in, try searching for: "nalanda residential junior college" alumni

Some of the results are marked "supplemental results".

Sullivan has a lot of reservations about the index, and his points seem worthy.

But he doesn't explain the following: what exactly is the supplemental index? How is it determined? How does it differ from the main index? And what is an "obscure or unusual" query?

Can anyone else explain?

[DerekH]

For one of my sites, the "supplementary" pages in the SERPS are all DMOZ pages that other directories are serving up - duplicates of the main DMOZ entry.

The appear last in the SERPS.

In that respect, the categorisation seems very fair and very straightforward.

DerekH

[jeremy goodrich]

Saw that marker in the SERP a few days ago - the results appear to be additional pages from the same domain name as appeared higher up in the SERP.

So, if you get more than 2 pages from a site / matching for a search query, I think those other pages will be flagged as "supplemental".

[Yidaki]

>Article claims google has 'new' supplemental index. Is it new?

There was a discussion a few days ago about Supplemental Results [webmasterworld.com] (August 26, 2003).