Digging Out of The Google Supplemental Index
One day or another, you are going to want to see which pages of your site Google thinks are most important. In the eyes of an SEO, Google has 2 indexes that are constantly monitored…
- The Main Search Index – Which are the MOST important pages.
- The Supplemental Index – Which are the pages that just don’t pass the muster to make the Google Grade!
How to Check your Own Sites Results
Edit: I pulled the links to the Supplemental index Calculator – It was kicking Threat Alerts with my AVG Antivirus, and I got similar reports from others as well.
First, you can do it the easy way and just head over to the Supplemental Index Calculator, input your www.domainname.com and see the results. Make sure that you check BOTH canonical versions of your domain, or the www. version, as well as the non-www. version. The results may be different in most cases!
- The new Golf Putter site is at 76% supplemental indexed pages.
- This site is at 74% Supplemental indexed pages
- Matt Cutts (Google Spam-Master) is at 49%
- Problogger Darren Rowse is at 54%
- Even Shoemoney is at 89%
So… when you look at your own results, don’t get all into a panic – its just the way it works! I don’t know exactly all the results are, since when you do a test on Google or Wikipedia, you get some crazy results!! But in my case with the new putter site…it shows 13 pages out of 54 are in the main index. There are a total of 58 pages published on the site right now, 4 have yet to show in any results (just published 2 days ago) Surprisingly, none of the 13 pages in the main index have ANY auction listings on them! What does that tell you?
Not surprisingly, I just checked 5 other sites that I know about, not my own, and there results are the same… NONE of the auction listing pages are in the main index, regardless of the unique content on the pages!
Finding your Good Pages and Replicating the Effort
In order to locate the specific page that Google thinks are GOOD ENOUGH to be in the main index:
site:www.yourdomain.com -inallurl:www.yourdomain.com
It will kick back the list of pages that are likely to do well in SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages)
Why Do Pages Land in the Supplemental Index?
I cannot agree with the fact that unique content makes the difference, because my “About” page is nowhere to be seen in the supplemental results, and it is 100% unique. This leads me to conclude that the main reason Google has chosen to exclude the pages from the MAIN index, is that they just aren’t important to what people may want to find!
Is it links? Not in my case… since I have done very little to even build any links, hoping most will occur naturally… and from the methods I am using in the N1Way Guide. The pages that ARE in the main index have almost no links to any of them! Most have no inbound link at all!
Digging out of the Supplemental Index
Now comes the experiment… since I have more than 50 reviews on the new site, how can I dig them out of the supplemental index? I am going to use 4 pages and on three, reorganize the content in three different ways, to see which one makes the difference. On the fourth, I am just going to focus on more onsite links to the page.
- On one page – Show “ZERO” auctions – but just a link to “Find [PRODUCT] on eBay”
- On a second page, I am going to reorganize the content, putting the listings in the very middle of the page content.
- On a third page, I am going to reduce the auctions to a single listing.
- Along with these three things – I am also going to choose a fourth page and link to it from various other pages on the site.
How Are Your Supplemental Results? Do you Notice Any Trends?
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Have I been Dropped from Google Search Index?
- Does Google Think Your Site Sucks?
- Why Does Google Deindex a BANS Website?
- Google Burned my Website to the Ground!
- Cool Google Indexing Tool
- Does Google Hate Competition? You Decide…
- What do You Know about Site Linking and Google?
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
I’ve found that auction pages created on BANS sites always end up in the supplemental index but auction pages created with phpbay don’t.
Thanks for posting this, but I’m having trouble splitting out which pages are in the main index and which are in the supplemental.
site:www.yourdomain.com -inallurl:www.yourdomain.com
returns the same result as:
site:www.yourdomain.com
@ Paul –
I actually checked several popular phpbay sites and they too have the same situation. (Some of my own and a few of others I know of)
POSTS that contain few to no auctions are indexed, but pages that are definite SELLING pages, where the auction listings are an integral part with [Find Deals on eBay] sections, they are the same.
On one of my own, it has 461 indexed pages, 52% are in the supplemental… which is very close to the number of pages that are “reviews” or “find deals” kinds of pages.
The rest are well written and unique posts, with no auctions, that link to those pages.
Mark
Mark
In the case of my phpbay sites -
I’m only showing 6-7 auctions per page (rows).
I’m using pages rather than posts.
I’m including anything between 1-6 paragraphs of text at the top of the pages.
I’m cloaking the images and links.
I always include “for sale on eBay” or similar above the auctions.
Wonder if any of the above make a difference?
Created a couple of sites over the past few weeks, using N1WAY method and Wordpresss. One site is 67% and the other at 12%. Working on a third at the moment, but using mainly posts instead of pages, we’ll see how it goes. Checked some BANS sites and most are in the 80-90% range, that’s still with pages I created that were trying to remove ebay footprints and more specific’s. But I suppose you can call them thin. I’m liking this WP thing though.
Not much of a fan of the g. Good info though.
@ All
For anyone following along with this – I think we have ID’d a VERY SPECIFIC block of code on supplemental versus index pages, that is common on every page not in the main index.
I am running some split testing right now – and should have results in a week or so… at which point I will go ahead and publish the findings.
@ Paul –
Thanks for bringing this up in the BANS forum!
Mark
I did a check and with the www it comes in at 21.43% and without the www it’s 7.14% – Is that good?
All the pages that are listed have ebay listings on them, they are all review pages bar 1. I have only listed 3 items for auction.
Oh, and I think maybe you did a little booboo – do you mean look for allinurl:www.yourdomain.com not inallurl:www.yourdomain.com
@ Cherie –
I have found that same common mantra in ref to auction listings. I have already started a new site, and pulled out ALL of the code I think may be triggering the action… It should be a pretty quick discovery if it IS the reason.
As far as the allinurl, versus inallurl, its actually designed to be a mispell on purpose, and could just as easily be xxgetyhds
:-)
Mark
Hi Mark,
Great post with some very valuable information for us newbies. I look forward to more information about the killer code which is moving pages from the main to supplemental index.
Thanks again for all the great information :)
Hi Mark
It must be because I’m a Brit (or female/dim/all of the above!) but I don’t get the last comment at all :)
if I type in inallurl I get a few thousand results – but not all my site.
anyway, we digress – I also have indexed a main page that still has no content on it as yet, just the coding and heading.
Course, the other thing I forgot to say was that mine is built using wordpress not BANS, don’t know how much difference that makes.
I get the feeling the whole supplemental index aspect could be misleading. The important thing is whether or not your pages that have auctions can be found in the main Google index when you search for them.
I’ve seen pages appear in the supplemental index for one phrase but not another.
Are auction pages of your BANS sites showing in Google, that’s what really matters in my opinion.
My site has a lot of supplemental results unfortunately. I’m not sure if it is because we use the descriptions on our eCommerce site that the manufacturers give out or what.
Hi. I have the same thing and *all* of the content on my site is original writing. It hasn’t seemed to effect the amount of natural traffic that I get, so it may be less of a problem than you think.
@ All –
Just to update this Test…
I made my changes to the code – and today, ALL pages of the site are in the MAIN index.
I will plan a post on it…
Mark
if your site has unique content and you results are still supplemental then you might want to do some promotion such as link exchanges and maybe even advertising…
Amazing stuff! Definitely some info to work with & grow.
Thanks Dude!
Hey, so I just re read this post and figured out that I have 100% Main Indexed site and 0 supps. !!! :D woo hoo!
Can’t wait ti read the update article.
Tony
Hi Mark.
Are you able to share which particular code block is guilty>
……..I think we have ID’d a VERY SPECIFIC block of code on supplemental versus index pages, that is common on every page not in the main index……..
First to get in to the index you have to submit your site. Once you submit it they should send you an E-Mail saying they liked it, thought it was usefull or some other reason and put it on there index. Until then it’s not on it.
There isn’t going to be a clear time line. You can’t really flip a switch and change over; you need to figure out why your site is indexed there, what you can do to get better recognition for the main index, and wait for the spider to do its work.
keep in mind that the supplemental index is not specifically a bad thing…the reasons for being listed there instead of the main index can vary, but it doesn’t really mean your site is being penalized at all. It mainly means you need to work on better link building and resolving issues like duplicate content.
It has to do with Google duplicate definition filter and it’s supplemental index. Some webmasters follow all the tech reports on how to tage pages no follow or follow to avoid malicious spiders intended to bump a main page off Google…
First, you should know that Google’s grounds for punishing those with duplicate content are actually quite reasonable. The fact is, Google wants to avoid search results pages overwhelmed by websites with the same or similar content, and with good reason; duplicate information makes it difficult for searches to find what they’re looking for.”
If you are writing on something you should use title with respective to visitors perspective (As a keyword a user will type in search engine to find something). Then next thing is to use that keyword as many times in the written content. this will make your site achieve higher position in search engines.
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