Are Your Pages Disappearing in Google's Supplemental Hell?
About a year or two ago,Google somewhat quietly instituted a new index that sort of sits on top of their main index. It is called the Supplemental Index.
The spinsters at Google have said that it does not affect your traffic. That when the engine cannot find anything in its main engine it will refer to the supplemental.
However, the challenge is that most real estate related searches are very competitive. So the chances of Supplemental real estate results coming up in the SERPS is poor.
How do you find out what of your blog or website pages are in Supplemental Hell?
Simply type into Google: site:www.url.com
This will list all the pages that Google has indexed. The more pages listed, the more chances for traffic.
Simply go down to the last pages and you will start seeing supplemental next to the result.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.realtor.com&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GGLJ&start=990&sa=N
Why does this happen?
Two reasons:
1. Your content is too similar to other pages in your site, or other sites.
2. Not enough Page Rank (Important Links)
Therefore, you need to alter your pages with new content, and add links to your pages to get out of Supplemental Hell. The reason you want out of this index is that you want your page to perform. As an example, the last site listed in the above graphic might be optimized for Nell Postell. If people search for Nell Postell this is Page that they will not find. This page is really a lost opportunity for traffic.
Receive a GET OUT HELL card by contacting us for Website Consulting, or SEO and linking services.
Great topic. Poor meta tag relevancy to page content is another common cause of getting tossed into Supplemental Hell (great term BTW). Another thing that can get blogs supplementalized (yes I made that one up) and break links in the G index is constant changing of post titles and category names. Change the post as much you like but stick with the title and category names you originally chose.
Posted by: REBlogGirl | July 8, 2007 at 05:33 AM
Nice one Mary!
Posted by: Tim O'Keefe | July 8, 2007 at 07:58 AM
Hiring a good SEO consultant can improve your results dramatically.
Posted by: havensofmanhattan | July 9, 2007 at 12:06 PM
That is very good advise. Web sites owners should be updating content constantly anyway.
Jeffrey
ionhomeinspection.com
Posted by: Jeffrey - Houston | August 1, 2007 at 05:44 PM