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Supplemental Result In Google - Hell Or Help
By: Barry Welford 2007-04-02 Google Hell was an evocative term when Jim Boykin coined it in 2005 to describe the Google Supplemental Results Index. Many webmasters earlier that year had been devastated by the Florida update when their Google generated website traffic in some cases had disappeared. Paranoia was everywhere. Google Hell struck a responsive chord and since then its been a term to make webmasters shudder. Even this year, Aaron Wall is still offering good advance on how to escape from that Hell. Its a strange term to associate with a company like Google, with its slogan Do No Evil. Mark Cutts, one of the best known Google bloggers, has recently suggested that supplemental results are not all that bad and will likely be getting better. Here is what he wrote:
Perhaps its the time to set the record straight on Googles supplemental results. People have leapt too quickly to vilify Google for putting some results in their Supplemental Results Index. There is a silver lining to this Google Hell. Let me explain. The True Nature Of Googles Supplemental Results First we should acknowledge that at first sight it is somewhat surprising that Google has split all web pages into two separate databases. This is not a strategic decision but rather a very practical operational decision. Let us remember that Googles mission here is to produce relevant results fast when people are doing keyword queries. Google is not applying some moral judgement to each web page as it is assigned to one database or the other. Web pages are being created every second at a staggering rate. This explosive growth rate is now accelerating as blogging and social media such as MySpace and YouTube become more and more popular. It would be an impossible operational process to give the same attention to every new web page that is created. So web pages that are more likely to come up as most relevant for particular keyword queries get more attention. These are registered in the main database. This means that these web pages are spidered on a regular basis to ensure they still exist and that they still have the same content. In a sense Google separates the sheep from the goats. Web pages that are less likely to feature in responses to keyword queries are registered in the Supplemental Results Index. There may be two reasons for that:
2. The keyword query for which they are the most relevant web page is very rarely posed by searchers. The Silver Lining Of Supplemental Results The division of all web pages into two distinct databases is likely done for operational reasons. Whether we like it or not that is the way Google has arranged matters. This division does help us understand how Google is assessing the individual web page. With both the Yahoo! and the MSN/Live search engines, it is not possible to know how valuable a given web page may be. With all three engines, it is relatively easy to check whether a given web page is indexed. If a search is done for relatively long patch of text from the web page, then the search engine should produce only that web page as the result of the query. Is this web page a sheep or a goat? If the web page is a goat, improve the quality. For Yahoo! and MSN/Live, the result will show whether it is included or not: its a simple Yes or No. It gives no indication whether the search engine thinks the page is valuable or worthless. The result for the Google search is much more informative. It may turn out that the web page is shown as a supplemental result. So the web page is less valuable in Googles view. Either other similar web pages are viewed as more valuable, or it is very rare that a search will be looking for this particular web page. If the web page is rightly assessed as being rarely searched for, then there need be no concern if it turns up in the supplemental index. If the web page should be visible in keyword queries, then being in the supplemental results index is a clear Call to Action. Good advice on what to do is easily found. In short, look to improve the content and improve the inlinks (or in Google-ese the back links) to the web page. Evaluating A Web Site Checking a single web page helps to understand the principles involved, but what is a practical way to evaluate a whole website. This can be done by using the Google site: search. This section is written given the way such searches function at the date of writing this post. Changes are always possible in the way Google does such searches and in general there is no announcement on when this may happen. If the search is done for site:www.mydomain.com, then this will show a listing of all the web pages indexed by Google. At the foot of the results, you will find the following:
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included. Clicking on the link to include the omitted results shows all results. This listing shows all the web pages in the main index first followed by the results in the supplemental results index. These will appear on the later search result pages. For example, the SMM Strategic Marketing Montreal website by this analysis has currently 345 web pages in the main index and 8 web pages in the supplemental results index. There is no duplicate copy effect here, it is just that presumably the final 8 have less PageRank. As another example, one of our clients with an e-store as part of the website shows the following statistics. There are 397 web pages in the main index and 235 web pages in the supplemental index. It is likely that this occurs because there is a great deal of similarity (duplication) between web pages in the supplemental index and those in the main index. Such situations are not a cause for alarm. If there are a satisfactory number of web pages in the main index, and if these are suitably visible in keyword queries, then Google will deliver a good volume of traffic to the website. A More Precise Listing Of Supplemental Index Web Pages Google searches giving numbers such as the site: search will usually give slightly varying numbers. The number of web pages in the Supplemental Results Index as calculated in the previous section will usually be an under-estimate. The following method will give a more precise estimate. Again be aware that this method may cease to work at some time but does work at the time of writing. The results are given by a search for the expression shown on the next line: site:www.mydomain.com *** -dxdxdx(anynonsensetext) For the SMM website, this search lists 22 web pages in the Supplemental Results Index (as compared with the 8 shown in the previous analysis). For the e-commerce website, this search lists 323 web pages in the Supplemental Results Index (as compared with the 235 shown in the previous analysis). If this count seems too high or if there are important web pages in the list then again this should be a Call to Action for corrective measures. Conclusion Web pages registered in the Supplemental Results Index have not been lost for ever in some Google Hell. Indeed they will appear in some keyword queries. However if they are important pages then this should serve as a Call to Action to improve their quality and their inlinks. Comments Tag: Google, supplemental result Add to  Del.icio.us |  Digg |  Reddit |  Furl Have a bookmark! -  About the Author: Barry Welford, President of SMM Strategic Marketing Montreal works with business owners and senior management on Internet Marketing strategy and action plans to grow their companies. He is a moderator at the Cre8asite Forums and writes on current issues on the Internet and on the Mobile Web in three blogs, BPWrap, StayGoLinks and The Other Bloke's Blog. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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