Google Supplemental Index Update
August 9, 2007 – 5:44 amThere has been much talk in recent weeks about pending changes to the Supplemental Index in Google. The “hack” in seeing which pages of your site was in the Supplemental Index stopped working.
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And then a new one sprung up that works, but many webmasters wonder for how long:
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Last week, on the official Google Blog, slight clarification was made as to the future of the Supplemental Index. In summary, Google is looking to allow for every search query to tap into the Supplemental Index and “expect to roll this out over the course of the summer.”
Then they “drop the bomb” on webmasters by stating that they are dropping the label “Supplemental Index” on URLs. This means that while the Supplemental Index will remain, you as a webmaster will not be able to tell which of your pages is in the main index and which are in the Supplemental Index.
Here are some tips to help get and keep your pages into the main index and avoid the Supplemental Index:
1. Get a Google Webmaster Central account and update your XML feed (sitemap) at least on a monthly basis. Correct any problems reported.
2. Each page should have a unique Title and Description. This includes NEAR duplicates. Most often, pages in the Supplemental Index occur because Google feels they are the same.
3. Your site should resolve to either the www version or non-www version. It should not display both.
4. If you have a dynamically generated site and the URLs have parameters such as question marks, look into using mod_rewrite (Apache servers) or ISAPI rewrite (Windows servers) to give Google a clean URL so it can be in the main index.
5. Each of your important marketing pages should have at least a moderate link campaign, as this will help get and keep the page in the main index.
You can read the full article on Google’s Blog.
There you go … five quick tips to help your site’s pages to stick in the main index instead of being in the Supplemental Index.
For more information on how to rank better in Google, Get the Google Best Practices Guide for just $47 at http://www.googlebestpractices.com/
By: Jerry West is the Director of Internet Marketing for WebMarketingNow. He has been consulting on the web since 1996 and has assisted hundreds of companies gain an upper-hand over their competition. Visit
http://www.webmarketingnow.com/ for the latest in marketing tips that are tested and proven.
