Suplemental Index | Developing a New Plan

Many of you may have noticed that supplemental operators aren't working. Well, I found one last week that was working, and has since stopped. They have been on again off again for some time. Google reported back on July 31st, 2007 that they were seeing a more narrow distinction between the supplemental and regular index. That supplemental pages were "fresher and more comprehensive than ever". At this point I think they have fully executed their plan to stop labeling supplemental results.

Here's my problem....Google claims to be placing fewer restrictions on sites, by as they say "indexing URLs with more parameters". However, one of the major mistakes that lands a page in the supplemental is duplication, and that is NOT addressed in this move. Many seasoned webmasters full know how to determine a probable supplemental page. The thing is, not all webmasters, have the knowledge, tools, or experience to do this. I think Google makes good effort in other areas, and before they removed this tool, they might have considered a addition to Google Webmaster Tools for duplication. I know what many are thinking reading this....who cares about the newbs. Well, everyone is a newb at one point. Since the search engines change the criteria so often, it is only logical that they supply, at least verified site owners, the tools to be successful in their index. Not doing so can breed even more spam and black hat techniques. Most people when faced with a dilemma will look to the most logical place for an answer, then most will continue to other resources for a fix...After many will give up or cheat.

I also think part of the reason Google's supplemental index has grown to be fresher and better is due to the serious attention it has gotten in the last year. Webmasters were easily able to locate information on how to check their supplementals, reasons for supplemental, and how they might fix these pages. Now, that will all be a little greyer. OK, so you might be wondering, how you might know a page is likely to be supplemental. Well you will rely on your stats and some search rank comparison for this. The page might be coming up short on traffic, you will have to weigh in what you suspect to be that page's traffic power compared to the other site's pages. You might find that page's Google traffic is a much lower or zero percent as opposed to your other pages. Yahoo traffic for that page, for example, might be OK...But Google is practically non-existent. If you have server stats, you might notice that Google doesn't crawl that page very often...For example every 3 or 4 months. Something else to consider is if all of your Google traffic is failing to perform and you have decent traffic from the other engines, you could have too many supplemental pages and Google has assigned your site low authority/credibility as a result. Lack of reasonably frequent crawls to your site would be a big indicator of this. There are some things you can do to pull it out, it takes time, planning and work.

SERPs will be a verification tool for a page you have determined to be probably supplemental. If the page was ranking well for specific keywords or phrases, and now it's not, that will signify a problem. Factor in any recent Google updates. Realize that your feeds, html sitemap pages (with no content), contact pages, and other minimally important pages to you...Google probably sees them the same way. So for example, you have 2 pages; one for product A, and one for product B. Product A is ranking well, good Google traffic. Product B is not. You have already determined that product B is not getting crawled much, and is a probable supplemental. I suggest this....Run a keyword density scan of the page and search Google for the most dense keyword phrases you can find from the page. Make sure you turn off Google customized search, or use a tool like this. Check some different data centers also, so you have a good picture. The reason I say this, is I have come across many customers and webmasters alike that have no idea what terms their site should be ranking for, their page is all about bicycle parts, and they are hoping to rank for Mountain biking. Google will only use the contextual information in the page, anchor text from backlinks, Meta title & maybe description, possibly "alt" tag text, and Domain/URL name to index you for queried keywords. I have heard ramblings about the text around your page's link on another site, but I do not believe it to be true, as it would certainly have some terrible black hat repercussions.

For folks who do not have server side access, this will be difficult. I use Analytics, as many other webmasters do. Maybe I am just to confused by the new layout, but I cannot find a clear path from my Google traffic to each page. So I offer a challenge, does some one have a free program/script that will supply referrer visits to individual pages, that does NOT have to be installed server side. Or can someone figure or already know how to get this information out of Anayltics. I would gladly publish an article written by this person, or link to such a program/script or article. Don't send any spam...I won't do it. I don't think the folks on free hosting or cheat hosting just trying to get started should be excluded from the ability to be marginally successful as they build their skills. I guess I am just a "blue collar" webmaster.

Peace and SEO

Melanie Prough
"Baby"


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