The Associate Reference

Written on July 14, 2007 – 10:42 pm | 323 views | Posted in Search Engine Ranking by admin (Who am I?)

For getting clarity of what Google’s Supplemental Index is, I will quote Google’s own definition of their new supplemental index.

“A supplemental result is just like a regular web result, except that it’s pulled from our supplemental index. We’re able to place fewer restraints on sites we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.

If you’re a webmaster, please note that the index in which a site is included is completely automated; there’s no way to select or change the index in which a site appears. Please also be assured that the index in which a site is included doesn’t affect its Page Rank.”

As per what we have learnt from Google, the supplemental index is used by Google to store pages which are difficult to crawl or are of low quality or the content of those pages are duplicates of existing web pages. GSI is basically a second rate low quality index.

Even though, there are no apparent ways of influencing whether your pages get added to main index or supplemental index, you may take certain precautions which will help you to stay away from GSI. It is believed that the Automatic PLR rewriting software will hasten your chances of getting into the GSI trap.

So why do so many pages end up in Google’s Supplemental Index?

These are the few things that may trigger your page into GSI…

1. Using Duplicate Content (on the same site or externally).
2. The page in question contains the same Title and META tags as other pages on your site.
3. If you have a blog, posting to multiple categories will generate duplicate content.
4. Your site creates crawling problems due to redirects, java script navigation, or simply too many parameters used in the URL or session IDs.
5. Having loads of unrelated external links on one page (just don’t do it!), or not enough internal or external inbound links to add “weight” to the page.
6. Your web page no longer exists, or is orphaned with no internal links pointing to it or buried too deep to be crawled properly.

There are certain steps that you may need to take to avoid your pages getting added to Google’s Supplemental Index…

1. Remove duplicate content from your website and keep your remaining content as fresh and unique as possible.
2. If you’re using PLR content - rewrite at least 30-50% of it.
3. Make sure your domain name appears consistent (i.e. with “www” or without “www”.)
   In this connection, you may refer to this post of mine on Domain Name Switch. It gives you tips on how to make your entire domain consistent with or without “www”.
4. Keep the site structure and navigation system simple.
5. Reduce the length of any URL to an acceptable level and simpler.
6. Increase relevant inbound links and use contextual linking where possible.
7. Use deep-linking (linking to other pages than just your index page), but try to keep within 2-3 levels.
8. Create and submit a Sitemap which will allow Google easy access to all your web pages and ensure that all your pages are indexed regularly and correctly.
9. In your blog, do not post to multiple categories. Each post should be posted to only one relevant category.

The above points, even though not exhaustive, will help you to avoid the GSI tangle.

At Jack Humphrey’s Blog, Friday Traffic Report, Jack has made a post which gives you an excellent solution, albeit lengthy, to avoiding the supplemental results foreover and on auto-pilot. This page of Jack discusses how to check how many of your pages are on the supplemental results and this page gives you a comprehensive solution for the GSI problem.

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