Google representatives posted this on August 1st, “Given all the progress that we’ve been able to make so far, and thinking ahead to future improvements, we’ve decided to stop labeling these URLs as “Supplemental Results.””
Tags: Disappears, Google, Index, Label, Supplemental
Posted by Dr. Pete
I veered left, but it was too late. A wall of fire sprang up in front of me, blocking my path. I turned around and there he was: Googlebot, my old nemesis and lord of the search underworld. Even as the flames engulfed me, damning me to supplemental hell, his cold, metallic laugh froze me to my very soul…
Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating just a little. It would probably be more accurate to compare Google’s supplemental index to a virtual Purgatory, a place where morally ambiguous pages go to wander for eternity. I’ve personally been stuck in this purgatory for well over a year with an e-commerce client. They have a data-driven site that’s been around since about 1999, and, admittedly, we’ve only recently started paying close attention to SEO best practices. Roughly six months ago, I realized that, of 32,000 pages we had in Google’s index, all but 7 were in supplemental. Now, before I offend Matt and Vanessa, I should add that I do believe them when they say that the supplemental index isn’t a “penalty box.” Unfortunately, when 99.98% of your pages are stuck in supplemental, there are, in my experience, very real consequences for your Google rankings.
Tags: Escaped, Googles, Hell, Supplemental
Google is indexing more pages now then ever before, but that’s not always a good thing. Sometimes these pages get sent to the supplemental index instead of the main index. It’s perfectly normal for most sites to have some pages in the supplemental index, but if your main pages (and especially your home page) get sent to the supplemental index you’ll likely not see much traffic from Google any more.
Tags: Googles, Results, Supplemental, Week
