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The Truth About Google Supplemental Results
By Mikhail Tuknov (c) 2006

So you have a slick, eye-catching web site with lots of fancy
graphics and flash animation. Congratulations! You excitedly
type in your site's url in Google's search engine...and your
site shows up in Google's supplemental results.

What's going on? What exactly are Google supplemental results
and why would you not want your web site to appear in them?

According to Google's FAQ page, supplemental results are part of
Google's auxiliary index (main results are drawn from the main
index) and pages, which appear on the supplemental listing, have
"fewer restrictions" than those that appear on the main results
page. They further say that the inclusion of sites on the main
or supplemental index is purely automated and does not affect
page rank at all.

In truth, however, pages that appear on the main index will
almost always show up first in a search. Supplemental search
results will only show up if there are very few or no results at
all in the main index. Plenty of older web sites also tend to
populate the supplemental results page. Needless to say the
supplemental results page is not where you want your site to end
up. Ironically several people have emailed Google asking that
their sites be included in the supplemental index!

So how does a site end up in the supplemental results page? And
more importantly how does one get out or even avoid inclusion in
the first place?

Several factors may affect your inclusion in supplemental
results, but keep in mind it is best to avoid these factors at
the outset, as it is easier to stay out of supplemental results
than to get out.

One of the most crucial factors to consider is the text content
of your web page; whether it is in the title tag, description
tag or actual web page content.

In the title tag, take care that you don't use the same title
for more than one page. Make sure that the title is actually
related to the page contents and that is not very long or
"spammy". Google will almost always send pages that it thinks
spam-ridden to the supplemental index. Another common error in
title tags is the use of too many or identical keywords. These
considerations also apply to the description tags as well; take
care that text here is not too long, repetitive, spammy or
unrelated to the page's content. Another thing to watch out for
in the description tag is the use of undecipherable language or
using a different language than the contents'.

Just like in the title and description tags, using duplicate
content text in several different pages will probably result in
inclusion in the supplemental index. Web pages with little or no
text content are another candidate for the supplemental index;
image tags, prices and small descriptive text do not normally
count as Google generally considers these as commercial page
contents, destined for...you guessed it: the supplemental index.
Long URLs or URLs with lots of dashes are also generally
thought of as spam by Google which is the reason why many pages
hosted by free sites end up in the supplemental index.

Aside from your web page's text content, another important
factor is the actual structure of your website; an orphaned page
(one that is not linked from your site or others) and pages with
poor or no backlinks may be relegated to the supplemental index,
along with pages that are nested several pages deep in your web
site. Pages such as these are thought by Google to be of lesser
importance than better-designed sites, so off to the
supplemental index they go.

Okay, so you didn't take all these factors into consideration
and now your beautiful web site is on the supplemental results
page...what now?

The first thing you can do is to write some good content. A few
lines of text won't be enough - make sure it is relevant to your
subject and that potential visitors to your site will enjoy
reading it. That goes for all the pages in your website. Try not
to have less than 50 words on any page on your site. And if you
have any text content that you "borrowed (copied)" from another
site, now would be a good time to change them.

Rewrite your title and description tags to be as descriptive and
relevant to your site as possible, but take care not to make
them too long or contain repetitive keywords.

At this point you may also want to consider revising the linking
structure of your web site; it is better to send all your back
links to all the pages in your website rather than to just one
page. Check to see that not too many of your pages are nested
very deep within your website. You can probably get away with
links three pages deep but two pages deep is much better. Don't
forget to check for any orphaned web pages!

Sometimes in spite of your best efforts in correcting all those
common problems, one or more of your web pages still stubbornly
show up in the supplemental results page. You might consider
making some new, more prominent links to these stubborn pages
from your home page. In some cases more drastic measures may be
necessary like a complete reworking of the link structure of
your entire web site, or even publishing them on a new url.

These are only the more common factors to consider if you want
to avoid being relegated to the supplemental index results. As
you can see, rectifying these issues after you're website has
already been placed in the supplemental index does not guarantee
relocation to the main index; remember it is much easier to
avoid being placed in the supplemental index than it is to be
taken out. So do it right the first time and design your website
accordingly, and hopefully you can enjoy the benefits of main
index listing and the high result ranking that you wish for.
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Mikhail Tuknov, search engine marketing specialist
(http://www.infatex.com/) is founder of Infatex Search Engine
Marketing Company (http://www.infatex.com/). With an extensive
background in Internet marketing, Mikhail Tuknov offers SEO,
PPC, SEM services.
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