Supplemental Index

The supplemental index has been called many different things. But, it is basically a purgatory created by Google for Web pages that have been deemed to be of no  value. Google’s main index contains all their good stuff. While Google stores all the garbage pages in their supplemental index. Web pages in the supplemental index used to be labeled as a “supplemental result” in the Google listings.

Presenting the Supplemental Index

Being placed in the supplemental index is the worst fear of millions of internet businesses that depend on search results to keep their online sales booming. Landing in the supplementals means that most of the public will never see their site when searching in Google. And getting out of Google’s supplemental index can be next to impossible because site operators are confused as to how they got there.

While the criteria for landing in the supplemental index is subject to change, duplicate content with a few extra complications thrown in is the basic practical reason. Newly created sites are especially vulnerable to ending up in the supplemental index.

The primary importance of duplicate content is very easy to prove. Basically, ALL the other extra complications are simply a lack of basic SEO. Present well search engine optimized webpages to Google and the only factor that will land your pages inside the supplemental index is duplicate content. However,it is also a hiding place for Web sites that Google has experienced too many fundamental problems with.  In other words, any site that Google does not want to crawl regularly is placed in the supplemental index.

Further, Google’s supplemental index did not develop inside a vacuum. The reason-for-being for the supplemental index was a very real need of Google for handling massive amounts of duplicate content from sites like Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s GNU Free Documentation License resulted in dozen and dozens of clone copies of Wikpedia being created overnight, each one of which had in excess of 500,000 webpages; all of which contained essentially the same informational content as Wikipedia. The raison d’être of the supplemental index documents the primary importance of duplicate content.

Matt Cutts explained in his frastructure status report: “the main determinant of whether a url is in our main Web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank.”

My recommendation is to forget all the nonsense being written about the importance of pagerank. The SEO community as a whole is totally confused on the supplemental index issue. Worst than that, they are constantly repeating quotes from their god Matt Cutts, while totally failing to understand the significance of what the Googlers have been saying. It does not take long for the humanizers of Google‘s algorithms to be blindly repeating the same nonsense. Comments about the primary importance of pagerank are simply total misinformation based upon the fact that landing in the supplemental index is technically part of the pagerank algorithm. While true, that fact is totally besides the point from the practical point of view of the Web site operator.

While Matt Cutts used pagerank in his above comments, he was really referring to the internal link structure of a site. Or in other words, a lack of basic SEO. So, assuming that you are using a minimal level of fundamental search engine optimization on your Web site the only thing that will land you in the supplementals is duplicate content. Any other spin on it, is pure double-talk.

My basic rule of thumb is: If you every want your Web site to succeed then it is best to ignore the politically correct double-talk of the Googlers whose only concern is to make you feel good about being in the Google trash can.