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Google's Supplemental Index -
What You Need To Know
By - Titus Hoskins
If you run an online website or business you have probably already
heard about Google's Supplemental Index. You may have even heard it being
referred to as Google's Gulag, Google's Digital Dungeon, or the moniker that
seems to have stuck: Google Hell.
Hate it or love it, webmasters are passionate about the big G.
There's no argument on that point for one good reason: Google simply delivers
the most search engine traffic on the web. For any webmaster with at least a few
white SEO connected brain cells Google can supply 60% or more of their traffic.
Therefore, suddenly getting the majority of your pages thrown into
Google's Supplemental Index can result in a correlating drop in business. A few
examples of this were reported in a recent Forbes article by Andy Greenberg
entitled "Condemned To Google Hell".
It recounts how two online jewelry businesses lost traffic and
sales by having their pages falling into Google's Supplemental Index. They
speculated on what had caused this to happen: duplicate content? buying links?
Matt Cutts, Google's main spokesperson (some say pacifier) to
worried webmasters everywhere, responded in his own blog:
"Having urls in the supplemental results doesn't mean that you
have some sort of penalty at all; the main determinant of whether a url is in
our main web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank."
However, regardless of what Google maintains, being in the
supplemental results is not a good thing for any webmaster or business. Just the
fact it's called a supplemental index means it's not as important as the main
index. This index is seen as duplicate pages, less important or less trusted by
Google, thus the lower PR.
All semantics aside, webmasters should try to keep their important
web pages out of this supplemental index. Why would anyone be satisfied with
having their pages or website buried in dusty boxes in the backroom when they
want them displayed on the Front Store Window, preferably in the #1 spot?
Lately, despite webmasters' wishes, Google seems to be placing more
emphasis on the Supplemental Index and putting more pages there. One can only
guess, but it may have to do with improving their SERPs -- the more relevant
Google's search results become, the higher quality their flagship product will
achieve. Or it may just be an easier way of spidering and managing all those
countless pages that exist on the web.
Regardless, you do not want your pages in this Supplemental Index
unless they are really unimportant pages and these can have the 'no follow'
attributes in the robots txt file. However, you still need to check this
supplemental index for your own pages.
Simple Way To Check Google's Supplemental Index
You can go to Google search and type in:
site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked
replacing 'yoursite' with your domain/site to see what pages are
indexed in Google's Supplemental Index.
If you see any important pages there you should check your whole
linking structure of your site. Are these pages linked properly? Are they
orphaned? Are they well positioned in your internal site architecture? If there
are obvious interior linking problems with these pages, fix them.
It is also a good idea to see what percentage of your pages are in
this index.
How To Calculate Your Supplemental Index Ratio
You can get your percentage of Supplemental results by dividing the
number of pages in the supplemental index by the total number of pages in the
main index.
site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked
___________________________________
site:www.yoursite.com
This will give you a good indication of the overall health of your
site. If you have too high a ratio or too many pages in the supplemental index
you should fix your site's linking structure and remove duplicate pages. Make
sure robots can crawl all of your pages or at least the ones you want them to
crawl.
If you do find your site or too many of your pages in Google's
Digital Attic, simply try to increase the PageRank of those pages. This is the
main remedy supplied by Matt Cutts:
"The approach I'd recommend in that case is to use solid
white-hat SEO to get high-quality links (e.g. editorially given by other sites
on the basis of merit)."
In other words, raise your PageRank to get those pages out of the
supplemental index. This has always been the basic key to getting traffic from
Google. Quality content plus quality links equals quality traffic from Google.
Likewise: QC + QL = No Supplemental Index
It is always a good practice to keep on the good side of Google. No
need to be paranoid, but you don't want to do anything to bring unwanted
attention to your site, especially the kind of attention that get your pages
thrown into Google Supplemental Index in the first place. Besides, you never
know how long it will take to get your pages back out and into the main index
where they truly belong. Rumor has it, that place takes forever to freeze over!
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About The
Author:
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous
websites. For the most effective web marketing tools try:
Internet
Marketing Tools
For the latest Google Marketing Strategies go here:Google Cash File Copyright
© 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource
box stays attached.
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