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"supplemental results" - what does it mean

I can guess, but would prefer something more definitive

         

HarryM

11:32 am on Nov 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I raised this question on the Florida update thread but it got lost amongst all the beating of breasts, tearing of hair, and gnashing of teeth. Hoping for a response this time.

On www a seach for www.mydomain.com lists my pages plus some inbound links. But on www2 and some of the other DCs the search gives the same results but with additions which are labelled "supplemental results". They disappear if I click "repeat the search with the omitted results included" and I just get my pages and the www inbound links.

I am guessing that at some time the supplemental results will be incorporated into one of the DCs, my PR recalculated, and then the results rolled out to the others and www. But as my database experience is zilch, I could be way off beam. Can anyone explain the process?

Brett_Tabke

4:06 pm on Nov 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



supplemental results [google.com]

HarryM

5:09 pm on Nov 21, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Thanks Brett,

I did a WebmasterWorld search before posting but couldn't find anything, then after posting found the same list with a Google search. I couldn't report it at the time as my post was being held pending Admin.

However none of the threads seem to exactly fit what I have seen. They talk about orphan pages, pages without snippets, etc., and it being a Google service to users. Also in one of the posts someone points out that what Googleguy was saying at the time is not necessarily going to be true for always.

But I think I have puzzled out what is going on.

All my "supplemental results" are inbound links. They have urls, snippets, and are cached. They are all PR0 (on the toolbar). All are recent additions.

I suspect these are pages for which the PR has not yet been calculated and as such cannot be displayed with the normal SERPS. Google has chosen this way to display them rather than ignoring them. Hopefully the "supplemental" tag will disappear after the next PR update and I will get some of the benefit from these links.

But as I said I know nothing about databases, so I could be hopelessly wrong. :)

Harry

rfgdxm1

6:25 pm on Nov 25, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



One thing I know for sure is in some cases the Supplemental Results are orphan pages. Other circumstances apparently also can cause this.

g1smd

11:58 pm on Nov 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



How to make a supplemental result:

Change your email address, then do a Google Search for the someone@somewhere (without the .com part) fragment of the old address. Note the listed sites.

Write to each site listing the old email address and inform them of the new address. Check that some pages change the data over and that it gets reindexed quickly, showing as a search result under the new address fragment.

Re-check the search results using the old search fragment and see that some sites that changed the data have simply dropped out of the list as expected, some are still listed under the old search term (even though the same site already shows under the new search term which replaced the old search term), while some other sites appear only occasionally in the results (as those pages are not in all datacentres) but that the "floating" sites have the words supplemental result appended.

.

>> I am guessing that at some time the supplemental results will be incorporated into one of the DCs, <<

I really hope not. The supplemental page listings represent what used to be on the site, not what is on the site right now. I'm hoping those pages get dumped for those search terms.

rfgdxm1

12:22 am on Nov 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>I really hope not. The supplemental page listings represent what used to be on the site, not what is on the site right now. I'm hoping those pages get dumped for those search terms.

Not necessarily. I have seen some orphan sites come up as supplemental results. These include the folks who think submitting their URL to Google is all that is needed, and don't bother with getting links from other sites.

HarryM

1:44 am on Nov 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I have had another look at my supplemental results and, yes, I think they are probably orphan pages. One page no longer exists, and two others are dynamic so there may be problems there. The one that looked legitimate is three levels down from a PR7 home page but there are over 1000 links on an intervening page.

Thanks to everyone who pointed me in the right direction.