What is a Google Supplemental Result and what causes it?
A Google Supplemental Result is a page which is only partially Google indexed and on the borderline of getting de-indexed. The causes of Supplemental results range from having similar or duplicate website content to not having enough backlinks to get the domain fully Google indexed. After the Google infrastructure update in Spring 2006 - known as "Big Daddy", increasing problems were seen with Supplemental pages, even though website duplicate content was not always to blame. It is still common to see supplemental result pages on new website domains which have few backlinks and sometimes on sites which developed Google trust problems through utilising poor SEO techniques.
What are the Google SERP ranking effects of having pages listed as Supplemental Results?
Supplemental Results are usually filtered and can be hard to find in the Google SERPS (search panel results) particularly when searching for competitive phrases and keywords. Generally, only non-competitive search terms will show any Supplemental Result pages in the top 10 SERPS results. For this reason, it can be very bad for an online business to have important website pages listed as Supplemental, particularly on an e-commerce site offering many different product variations around a common theme.
Common causes and reasons for a Google Supplemental Result are listed below:-
1. Duplicate Content - Google Supplemental Result problems on more established websites are often the result of duplicate web pages or website content being present elsewhere on the World Wide Web or by web pages on the same website domain being too similar to each other. Start by checking for duplicate content by using Copyscape. This free service can help find plagiarised or duplicate content on the web. Enter the URLs of your Supplemental Result pages into a Copyscape search window and check for plagiarised content on other web domains. If similar content is found, you'll need to correct the problem - either by contacting the webmaster of the site who has plagiarised your content or by re-writing your page/s to eliminate duplicate content. Google has got tougher on duplicate content and pages which have similar structure and content will often now be listed as Google Supplemental Results.
2. Website Content Similarity - Google Supplemental Results can also be caused by having the same HTML title and a similar META description on each page, especially where there is a significant amount of duplicate page content. This can often be made worse by excessively large website navigation systems duplicated on all pages. One Supplemental Result example we saw used a pull-down form based navigation system which had hundreds of links to other web pages all individually listed. Each page was 125KB big, mostly caused by the website navigation code. This kind of website navigation system can "bury" the unique content of each page increasing similarity between web pages and make Supplemental Result problems much more likely.
3. Lack of Website Backlinks - One of the other reasons for Supplemental Result is due to lack of inbound links and lack of site age (it's a common problem on a new website). It's worth checking the number of backlinks to your site in Yahoo! by typing link:http://www.mydomain.com in a Yahoo! search window. If few links are shown, then this could well be the cause of the problem. After the Google Big Daddy update, Google became more reluctant to fully index websites with few inbound links (backlinks) as rightly or wrongly they weren't deemed as important enough. This often causes a partial Google indexing problem, with frequently only the homepage of a domain being indexed and other internal pages showing as Supplemental Results.
4. Poor Website Navigation - Where most web pages on a particular domain show as Google Supplemental Results and they have unique content, check the Page Rank (PR) of the homepage. If the Google PR is less 3, then Google may only fully index the most prominent pages in the domain based on examining the website's internal linking structure. Often, these are the web pages which are directly linked to from the homepage by means of a static hyperlink. To get more pages Google indexed, the prominence of important website pages can also be boosted by linking to them from the most 'search engine visible' pages on your domain, such as your homepage. Indirectly, improving a website navigation system can sometimes help to solve Supplemental Result problems. Start by determining your most important web pages and then implement a sensible internal linking and website navigation system incorporating your most popular page URL's. At the same time, ensure that your website navigation system is search engine friendly using a website link analyser. By improving website navigation, you may be able to get more website pages fully Google indexed, solving the problem of partial Google indexing and Supplemental pages.
5. Low PR Website - Where the Google Page Rank of your homepage is less than or equal to 2, improving your website navigation system and the prominence of internal pages by using static hyperlinks from the homepage, may still not be enough to get Google to fully index all pages of your website. At PR2 or lower, your homepage Page Rank is probably too low to pass on enough Page Rank to your internal pages to get them fully Google indexed. To resolve the problem of partial Google indexing, get more inbound links to your site from web directories and sites of a similar theme and wait patiently for the supplemental pages to be fully indexed. In addition, getting inbound links pointing directly to the most important pages of your website (rather than just targeting your homepage) is another powerful way of boosting the ranking of those pages against specific keyword terms and solving Supplemental Result problems.
6. Mod Rewrite Website Content - Care should be taken when doing a website mod rewrite to avoid triggering Google Supplemental Results for the re-written pages. Mod rewrite encompasses changing website URL's and/or moving website o webpage content. A full definition of mod rewrite can be found at Wikipedia. Changing the URL's of existing, established website pages can lead to search engine indexing problems if done inproperly. Often search engines will see the new page URL's as duplicates of pages they already have in cache, leading to Supplemental Result issues on the modified or re-written pages. To avoid this, redirect the old web pages to their individual new URL's using a search engine friendly 301 re-direct. This can be set up in the form of a simple .HTACCESS file and works well on all but Microsoft hosted web servers.
7. Google Advice - Watch the Matt Cutts Supplemental Results Help Video (he's a Google engineer) for more helpful advice and tips on avoiding Supplemental Results.
8. Professional SEO Advice - If you need more professional help and advice on solving website Google indexing problems such as Supplemental Result issues, contact KSL Consulting for affordable, expert UK SEO consultancy. An SEO consultant will contact you without obligation and provide a low cost quote to carry out a comprehensive SEO audit of your website.
Good Article on Duplicate content and supplement results.
http://www.ksl-consulting.co.uk/google_supplemental_result.html
