Google Supplemental Index – What Is It? How to Get Out!
Pages are in the supplemental results because we still wanted to be able to show them to users, but the pages didn’t have enough PageRank to make it into our main index (which is more extensive and updated with greater frequency).Getting more *quality* backlinks is generally a good way to get more of your pages in the main index.
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1)Penalty?When your site has pages in our supplemental index, it does *not* indicate that your site has been penalized. In particular, we do not move a site’s pages from our main to our supplemental index in response to any violations of our Webmaster Guidelines.2) Freshness?
You can expect to see a fresher supplemental index in the coming quarters. By the definition of “supplemental,†however, I don’t forsee it becoming as comprehensive or frequently updated as our main index. Â3) Cure?
Get more quality backlinks. This is a key way that our algorithms will view your pages as more valuable to retain in our main index.There is discussion about how to get out of the supplemental index and they mainly involved creating good internal linking to move pages out of the supplemental index. For example, if the front page of Med1Online has a PR of 4, the pages it directly links to will pick up some ‘internal’ PR….these linked pages will have even lower PR, but may have enough to continue ‘bleeding’ PR down one more level….however, the next level will probably not have enough PR to make the main index without external PR linkage.Â
It appears many large sites, including Amazon and MySpace, have LOTS of pages in supplemental. For research, here is a count for Med1Online and a comparision with another eCommerce sites.
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This shows the number of pages in Google for a site. ÂÂTo find the total pages in the supplemental index, you can use the following search link.As far as getting the pages out of Supplemental, here is the best list of the Top 5 Ways to get out of the Supplement Index:1. Eliminate the duplicate content issues on your pages. Page TITLE and meta Description tags should be unique (and meta Keywords, too, if you use it). Try to limit as much duplicate content as possible. It’s okay to have a common header, footer, and site menu on your pages — as long as your pages have enough other content to offset the common stuff. It’s not okay for your red widget and blue widget product pages to have the same exact product description and page content, with the exception of the color. Â2. Improve the content on the supplemental pages. As mentioned in #1, pages with little or no content are strong candidates to land in the supplemental index. That’s especially true if the amount of duplicate content (header, footer, etc.) is substantially more than the non-duplicate content.
3. Improve your site architecture. If you have pages that are 4-5 levels deep (i.e., below or away from the home page), redo that structure so the pages aren’t buried like that. Make it easier for the crawler to reach all your pages.
4. Improve your internal linking. Have a site map that includes links to all your pages. This’ll help make sure pages don’t get orphaned. Be sure to link to the site map from your home page so the crawlers can find it — and all those links — easily.
5. Fix your link profile.  This is your site’s overall link profile. Who you link to and who links to you impacts the level of trust Google gives you, and less trust often equals more supplemental pages.
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