Supplemental Results and how to get out of the “Google Poo”
Author: Joe Whyte
Do you utilize search commands like site: and link:? If so you probably have seen something that says supplemental results on some of the listings when doing a search. Supplemental results are what I like to call “the devil”, “pain in my arrrs”, “Hell Zone” or most notedly “Google poo”. Basically Google will take results on your site and put them into a supplemental search basket.
Lets hear what Google has to say about supplemental results:
Supplemental sites are part of Google’s auxiliary index. We’re able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.
The index in which a site is included is completely automated; there’s no way for you to select or change the index in which your site appears. Please be assured that the index in which a site is included does not affect its PageRank.
Here is what they are really saying:
If you do a search then results from Googles “normal” index will show up first and then the supplemental results will show up towards the end of the results. Now the reason you might be seeing supplemental results more often is that Google does not have enough pages in its normal index for that given search and will populate the SERP’s with its supplemental results.
If your site has pages that are supplemental that means you are not getting the best use out of your indexed pages.
Reasons why Google might put your pages in its supplemental results:
1. Orphaned pages – means that your pages might not have any inbound links pointing to it or they are severely devalued.
2. Duplicate content – if you use articles from article distribution sites or copy and paste content from other peoples websites this could put that page within supplemental results.
3. No content – if you supply mainly images or hardly any content on a page this could as well cause your pages to drop Google poo!
How do you bring your pages out of the supplemental results:
1. Get inbound links to your orphaned pages and make sure they are quality link that are relevant to your pages topic.
2. Remove all duplicate content and write your own copy for your pages.
3. If you don’t have content or enough content on these pages that are supplemental then you need to create more.
Once you make these changes your pages will be revisited and re-cached. You can also create a Google sitemap in order to help Google crawl more pages of your site. Remember that poo is dirty and Google tends to drop a lot of it so keeping up with your sites indexed pages will help your site pull up for more relevant search results.
December 8th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
You are too smart, Joe.
And I’m five years old, because “Google poo” is hysterical to me right now.
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:56 am
[...] Joe Whyte offers these tips: • Get inbound links to your orphaned pages and make sure they are quality link that are relevant to your pages topic. [...]
December 24th, 2006 at 2:18 am
[...] I was doing some SEV (search engine vanity) today and I noticed that Joe Lewis from Web Pro News decided to do an interesting post about a topic that has been widely discussed in 2006 which is Google’s Supplemental Results. I recently did a post over at lunarpages about “Google Poo” and during my SEV I found a post on Web Pro News quoting me. Needless to say I was flattered and Joe Lewis wrote a great article about Google supplemental results and I recomend everyone checking out his article. I am going to have to put you in my news reader JOE! [...]
December 24th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
[...] Escaping Google’s Supplemental Dead ZoneRecently throughout the blogosphere, a discussion has begun to gain steam about how exactly Google’s supplemental results are determined, and what steps webmasters can take in order to rescue these left-for-dead pages and return them to the main index.In what can seem like a black hole of search results, Google’s supplemental index seems to be growing at a steady, almost ominous rate. As the company refines how it ranks and indexes pages, those left behind the curb are surprisingly finding themselves relegated to the “dead zone” of search. What is a Supplemental Result? According to Google: A supplemental result is just like a regular web result, except that it’s pulled from our supplemental index. We’re able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.I want to meet the PR person that wrote this, because this is some of the best spin I have ever seen. Google wants webmasters to be happy that the supplemental index offers “less restraints” on sites – never mind the fact that there’s virtually no way the site will rank highly in any keyword by existing in the SI.Let’s just say, for arguments sake, that a webmaster would want his/her site to rank highly in Google’s main index. (This is a pretty bourgeois concept, I know.) What steps would need to be taken to avoid ending up in the dead zone? First, we should look at how sites end up there in the first place. Search Engine Guide’s Matt McGee outlines some trouble spots that could contribute to a site’s inclusion with in the supplemental index:• Duplicate content. This is often the main reason a page ends up in the supplemental index.• Too many variables (parameters) in the URL. Google mentions this on the “help” page linked up above.• Poor overall link profile. Matt Cutts specifically mentioned earlier this year that the Bigdaddy software upgrade would result in more supplemental results for “sites where our algorithms had very low trust in the inlinks or the outlinks of that site. Examples that might cause that include excessive reciprocal links, linking to spammy neighborhoods on the web, or link buying/selling.”• The page is buried. Orphaned pages are candidates to go supplemental. These are pages which can only be reached by a deep crawl of your site’s internal links, or pages which can’t be reached at all.There doesn’t seem to be a big mystery here. These types of improvements are common when it comes to SEO, and you would be hard pressed to find anyone who is knowledgeable about search that didn’t already understand the importance of these fundamental concepts.Vanessa Fox, however, lets us in on a tip that may not be so obvious in a Google Groups post outlining the critique of a site:Looking at your site in the search results, it appears that your pages would be well served by meta description tags. For most queries, the generated snippet is based on where the query terms are found on the page, and in those cases, your results are fine. But for some more generic queries, where a logical snippet isn’t found in the text, the generated snippet seems to be coming from the first bits of text from the page – in this case, boilerplate navigation that is the same for every page.Rusty Brick at Search Engine Roundtable breaks down Vanessa’s suggestion:In summary, by adding a meta description tag, a unique one, for each page, Google will use that information as extra criteria to determine the uniqueness of the page. That is how I understand it. Otherwise, Google will use the top text of your page’s content, and that can potentially be your top navigation or worse. This comes in handy for conducting site: command searches with no keyword specific data given after the site command.That’s a great start to the process, but what other techniques can webmasters employ to avoid being sucked into the dead zone?Joe Whyte offers these tips:• Get inbound links to your orphaned pages and make sure they are quality link that are relevant to your pages topic.• Remove all duplicate content and write your own copy for your pages.• If you don’t have content or enough content on these pages that are supplemental then you need to create more.Once you make these changes your pages will be revisited and re-cached. You can also create a Google sitemap in order to help Google crawl more pages of your site.The Google Success blog adds:• Rewrite your page title and description tags so that they are descriptive and relevant to your site, taking care that they are not too long or contain repetitive keywords.• You may need to rewrite your PHP code for e-commerce websites using mod-rewrite to simplify the cryptic URLs and also add unique meta tags to each page. Hmm, maybe there’s something to this meta tag thing after all, as this is the second mention of the importance of having unique tags on each and every page. I guess it really is the “little things” that make all the difference.Of course, don’t tell that to Jason Calacanis, he still thinks that SEO is bullsh*t.In any event, if you’re finding that your page is trapped in the desolate landscape of Google’s dead zone, you might try applying some of these optimization techniques in your efforts to escape. My apologies in advance to Stephen King; I swear I’m not ripping you off.Tags: Search, Google, Supplemental IndexAdd to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl [...]
January 25th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Thanks for sharing with this valuable and informative comment. I have sites that have lots of supplementary pages. After reading your comment and the article, now I have an overview of what might have been the cause. Will be following your tips closely and hoping will get out of the supplementary page. Thanks a lot.
February 3rd, 2007 at 7:18 pm
[...] Google Supplemental Results: Google supplemental results take pages on your site that have been indexed and put them into a sub database in google. Supplemental results do not rank well but rather google uses its supplemental DB to populate its results when they don’t have enough results to show in a given query. This means pages on your site in Googles supplemental DB will not help you in the serps. How to get through this: Its pretty simple actually. Just get some inbound links to your pages. Check this post out to find out more about the Google Poo (supplimental results). [...]
February 8th, 2007 at 12:34 am
[...] He also has a bigger post here, Supplemental Results and how to get out of the “Google Poo” has a little more depth on how the problem can occur. [...]
February 26th, 2007 at 7:31 am
[...] Situations where you may need to deep link are going to be when your internal pages are in Google’s supplemental results, your results are omitted in the SERPs, your internal pages are not getting crawled, indexed or cached or your internal pages are just not ranking well in the SERPs. In my experience, if you are operating an authority site with high trust rank, then it may be easier for you to get rankings for your internal pages with a few links. If you have a site with lower trust rank, you may need more links to its internal pages. Jim Boykin put together a nice tool to analyze deep link ratio. Rob Sullivan put together a pretty nice list on how to build a deep link campaign. [...]
May 5th, 2007 at 8:09 am
[...] How to get out of the ‘Google Poo’ [...]
September 29th, 2007 at 11:03 am
[...] actually. Just get some inbound links to your pages. Check this post out to find out more about the Google Poo (supplemental [...]