Staying out of Google's Supplemental Index

In late 2003, Google unveiled a new index, separate from its main web index, that it queries if it fails to find good results in its main index. For unusual or obscure queries, you may see some results from this separate index. They'll be flagged with the text "Supplemental Result" next to the URL.

The supplemental index is normally reserved for pages that are considered duplicates (or near duplicates) of other pages, pages that have little or no content, or pages that used to have incoming links but no longer do.

Google's supplemental results have become a topic of conversation again recently, during the BigDaddy rollout. During the last few weeks of the BigDaddy rollout, large numbers of otherwise well-linked web pages were showing up as Supplemental Results. Google acknowledges the problem and says that they are working to fix it.

The supplemental index is not a good place for your pages to be, as pages in the supplemental index have almost no chance of ranking for good keywords.

If your pages have only recently begun showing up as "Supplemental Results", you probably shouldn't worry too much about it. Things should be back to normal as soon as Google rectifies their recent problems.

However, if you've had pages in the supplemental index for a long time, then you should address the problem. Here are some steps you can take:

• Make sure that your pages have enough content. Extremely short blog posts and other very brief pages sometimes end up in the supplemental index.
• Make sure that your pages have unique content, from each other and from other pages on the Internet.
• Make sure that no one is duplicating your pages elsewhere on the Internet. You can run a search on some of the unique phrases in your page to see if other pages may be similar.
• Try to acquire more and better links to your supplementally indexed pages. Try to get keywords that people are search for in the anchor text of links coming from authoritative, similary themed pages.

Need help getting your pages out of Google's supplemental index? Contact us today.