Google Removies Supplemental Index Label

By Christine Parfitt
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-08-02

Google has announced the removal of the "supplemental index" label in their search engine results pages (SERPs). For the time being the labelling appears to be all that has changed and there is still a difference in the way pages in the supplemental index are treated.

However, the announcement states that this difference will narrow and that changes are underway to narrow the gap between the main index and supplemental.

To recap on the main issues, supplemental pages don't rank very well and they are not crawled as often. Consequently the supplemental index has been given a lot of attention by search engine optimisers with much debate about how to get out of "Google Hell" as it was named.

Now it seems that the issues are still there but it's harder to determine which pages are not in the main index. One method appears to be to search for a unique expression from a page and see if the page comes up in the search results. If it doesn't then the page isn't in the main index. The label was easier and more convenient even if there was much disagreement on what to do with the information.

So, the causes and remedies are still relevant for the time being. No doubt there will be more discussion over the next few weeks as the promised enhancements are rolled out.

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About the Author:
Christine Parfitt is a search marketing strategist and the founder of Semfire, a search marketing company based in Australia. She specialises in paid search and shares news and best practices at Semfire Search Engine Marketing Blog.