Sphinn - So Long, Supplementals (At Least The Labels)

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So Long, Supplementals (At Least The Labels)

Went Hot: August 1, 2007 - 3:04 am
Posted By: dannysullivan 703 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com)
Category: Google SEO

As expected, the Supplemental Results label is going away. But Google also promises you'll notice less difference in the future in being listed in supplemental, as well.

14 Comments

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from dannysullivan 703 days ago #

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I've got my own write-up now posted here:

http://searchengineland.com/070731-215828.php

Covers how Matt is saying there will probably be some alternative way to still find supplementals.

from Justin-Goldberg 703 days ago #

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Why why why didn't they leave 'site:example.com *** -sljktf' intact?

Now if they only want a site's webmaster to see their sites supplementals, then that's different, and should go into google webmaster tools.

from JohnWeb 703 days ago #

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Everyone is just going to have to worry about boring things like traffic and conversions now.

from jaybong 703 days ago #

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This sucks, I am making some major internal structure changes to a massive website and the only way to measure it's success effectively is with a supplemental %.

All month I was looking forward to seeing the results and now just when it's nearly ready...

from dannysullivan 703 days ago #

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Postscripted my story with the workaround Google is recommending (export URLs from Webmaster Central, export links, see which pages don't have links -- there's your supplementals).

@JohnWeb :)

from MattC 703 days ago #

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Great for Google, one less thing for people trying to reverse engineer.. However makes our life crappy which will make their search results crappier because now we can't see what pages suck by not seeing the supplemental tag therefore now we don't know what pages to fix. And since its one less thing to help us with our own "Quality Control" its much more crap their index will get. (i think that rhymes in some way.)

Now if they put a tool in webmaster central for the Supps, that would be fantastic.

from graywolf 703 days ago #

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Yay take something that was easy and useful, obligate people to join the borg to get it, and make twice as complex to do. I can hardly contain my excitement over this improvement. ;-)

from Jill 703 days ago #

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Did you know that you can blame Chris Sherman for this? ;)

On our SES panel in Toronto that I was on with Adam Lasnick, Adam was getting a ton of supplementals questions, and Chris S. finally just said to him, "why don't you simply stop labeling them then, if they're really not that big of a deal and out of the control of the webmaster?" (Not an exact quote, but something like that.)

Now, I don't know if they were contemplating this already or not, but to me it was brilliant!

I for one think it's great that they stopped labeling them as I'm sick of getting questions about them on my forum and to my newsletter as well.

Supplemental results pages are generally the obviously worthless pages of your site. That's the bottom line, so get over it. As long as the real pages of your site that matter are indexed properly -- and they should be if you have any webmastering skills whatsoever-- then whatever was showing in supplementals were non-issues anyway.

They were always just pages that Google found through crazy means anyway and they were always pages that shouldnt' have been indexed in the first place, imo.

from g1smd 703 days ago #

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In the beginning they were mainly the result of www and non-www and/or multiple-domain-name-for-same-site, and/or multiple variable-parameter-order in URLs, types of Duplicate Content issues, but other factors were also built in in more recent times.

In 2006, they were a great way to show using a site: search that a site had some sort of Duplicate Content and/or IA/navigation problem within the site. It was easy to diagnose some of those things very quickly.

from Tanya 703 days ago #

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I agree with you Jill - this change is a welcome one for me. I have had too many clients calling/emailing me obsessively about their sup results and me explaining that it doesn't matter because those pages are pretty much useless.

Now instead of them stressing out about the label they can spend the time adding content to those pages to make them useful. :)

from g1smd 703 days ago #

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Often those pages were rendered useless by poor site structure, and more often by a complete failure to get to grips with URL canonicalisation.

Now those sites will still have those problems, but there will be no easy way to convey to the owners of those sites that there is a problem to be fixed.

There are still ways to show some of the problems, but not anything that easy.

from MattC 703 days ago #

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^^g1smd brings up a good point that now it wont be easy to show people what is a problem with their site. Its bad enough there is too many intangible things associated with our business.

from graywolf 703 days ago #

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I for one liked to know what pages google thought were unimportant or not. It allowed me to evaluate if that was something I was ok with or wanted to "fix" (did I have scratch on the car door or a big dent). Especially with client sites where an unknown number of hands may have been "fixing" things before hand.

from Halfdeck 689 days ago #

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"Supplemental results pages are generally the obviously worthless pages of your site."

Well, Jill, the problem for some webmasters is that Google thought their entire site was worthless just because their site lacked visibility and backlinks.

It's easy to brush off supplemental issues if your client owns a TBPR 5+ site where the majority of its pages are in the main index, but if you're working with a client with a brand new website then supplemental results is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Just because a page lacks PageRank doesn't necessarily mean its worthless.

"As long as the real pages of your site that matter are indexed properly -- and they should be if you have any webmastering skills whatsoever"

It has nada to do with webmastering skills. It has to do with PageRank. That's a popularity contest, not skill. You can be a great webmaster but without backlinks, guess what, most of your site will be supplemental no matter how you structure your site.