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minnseoelite
April 4th, 2007, 06:21 PM
I know some of you are still not familiar with the Google supplemental results, what they are, and how they work. While I am no expert on them I will do my best to explain them.

A while back Google realizing its index was becoming full of duplicate pages set out on a way to clean up its main index while still retaining the internet's largest search index. This is where the idea of a "supplemental results" index was born. With this Google could remove alot of its duplicate content providing more varied and relevant results while still offering searchers the ability to look through what it deemed as duplicate content if they chose to.

The Good and The Bad

It seems buy many webmasters that the Google supplemental results is kind of like a double edge sword. On one side it clears out some of the competing web pages making for less competition and easier rankings. On the other side many webmasters unfamiliar with how the supplemental index works have found their sites pages stuck in this search void unable to gain any kind of ranking or real traffic and no idea how to get out.

The Solution

As previously stated the main purpose of the Google supplemental results is to eliminate duplicate content from Google's main search index. While the solution looks easy enough there are a few things a webmaster tends to over look. While making sure your sites on page content is unique from other sites you also need to make sure its unique from other pages on your own site as well. This not only includes the on page content that a visitor sees but your pages Title and Meta Description tags as well. A little time spent making sure your sites pages are as unique as possible can mean the difference between being stuck in the "supplemental void" where there is little chance of anyone visiting your site and appearing in Google's main index where the action is.

jeremy860
April 4th, 2007, 06:27 PM
So would this be like instead of having a page title of:
domainname.com | Graphics | Myspace Backgrounds

I should have something like this?
Myspace Backgrounds

minnseoelite
April 4th, 2007, 06:31 PM
Either one is find the point is just to keep them unique. I have seen alot of myspace sites where you look at the Title tag and no matter what page you go to the Title never changes it always reads the same.

NYCBORN
April 4th, 2007, 06:36 PM
I've tested it and yes you wind up in Supplemental Results and your page ranks crappy.

minnseoelite
April 4th, 2007, 06:45 PM
Yes I leaned this from a member on Sitepoint a good while back and it has worked for all my sites. Since implementing this generally 90% of my sites pages appear in Googles main index and not the supplemental results anymore

NYCBORN
April 4th, 2007, 06:49 PM
I still have some pages that are in supplemental cause of this. Just been too busy working on other projects to fix.

minnseoelite
April 4th, 2007, 06:53 PM
I still have some pages that are in supplemental cause of this. Just been too busy working on other projects to fix.


Man gotta get that stuff fixed never know you could be loosing a few thousand visitors a day.

NYCBORN
April 4th, 2007, 06:55 PM
Very true. Just been busying trying to code my backend for my site. Everything is done manually right now with some components using php includes. I wish I would have found out about MSRS in the beginning but I didn't even know about this place. Would have saved me a ton of headaches.

idzone
April 4th, 2007, 10:02 PM
Does one need to repair only the 'title tags' and 'meta tags'?

minnseoelite
April 4th, 2007, 10:11 PM
Does one need to repair only the 'title tags' and 'meta tags'?

If you are finding alot of your sites pages are appearing in the supplemental results then redoing the Title and Meta Description tags so that each page has unique tags is generally the easiest route to try first. Also if your site has some good rankings for some keywords check to see exactly which pages have those rankings as you will want to be sure to leave those ones alone


To check to see how many of your sites pages are in the Google supplemental results just go to the Google search box and type in site:http://yourdomain.com and click search, this will bring up all the indexed pages for your site. Then down at the bottom of the search page where it says Gooooogle start at the last page and work your way back words beside each page in the green text next to the URL it will tell say supplemental if the page is in Google's supplemental results