Does a high supplemental index ratio hurt?

[wige]

There have been several posts about how to calculate your supplemental index ratio in Google, which is a measure of the percentage of your pages that are contained in the supplemental index. My question is, can having too high a percentage of your pages in the supplemental index hurt your site's rankings?

I understand why it is better to have a specific page in the main index rather than in the supplementals - the supplementals are only used if Google can not find a match in the main index, so it is unlikely that a searcher would ever see a page from the supplementals unless they enter a very specific query (such as a long tail search).

Currently, I have about 150 pages of my main web site in Google's main index. I also have approximately 35,000 pages in the supplemental index. These 35,000 pages are, from a search engine perspective, unimportant. They do not target any high-conversion keywords, they are only product information and specifications pages. Customers want the data, but the pages are not expected to rank well.

I can easily block these pages through robots.txt. This will change my supplemental index ratio from 99.9999% to 5%. If there is a specific benefit to the rest of my site from making such a change, I would consider it.

However, I should mention that these pages do capture a large amount of traffic from long tail searches. Despite top ten placement for highly competitive search terms, the pages we have in the supplemental index deliver at least four times the traffic from long tail searches.

[erikko]

for me yes it affects the credibility of your site and your pr rankings as well

[mjtaylor]

More and more pages are in the supplementals today, as Google as "demoted" links, listings and product pages. For example, many of the real estate listings on my sites are now in the SI ... I am considering making those pages no follow to reduce the ratio, as you put it. However, in this case and others, the site still does as well as ever (top 5 for its top relevant phrases) so having a lot of pages in the SI doesn't seem to have hurt the site in any way.

Cheers, MJ

[bj]

This is purely gut reaction, but my feeling is that if you have all those long tail people coming in through those pages I wouldn't change a thing and I wouldn't worry about it, as long as you're converting and you're reasonably pleased with your site's performance and the direction your stats are going in. But I'm not an SEO weenie.

I'd also venture to say that the people coming in on those long tail searches are the ones who are converting. For example, someone looking for "golf club set" is just starting to do the research, whereas someone looking for "Nicklaus Dual Point Advantage" is a lot closer to the purchase.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

However, in this case and others, the site still does as well as ever (top 5 for its top relevant phrases) so having a lot of pages in the SI doesn't seem to have hurt the site in any way.

I am sorry that I will have to agree to disagree with you. You are not ranking well because or even if you have pages in the SI. They are other factors that boost your rankings. But they would be even better if you have eliminated the SI problems.

That is a fact.

[nelsonez]

This is an interesting question WIGE. We are currently investigating the same issue. We did some preliminary analysis and it indicated that generally the competitors to our clients ranked better when they had a higher percentage of pages out of the total in the Main google index. Or to put it a different way less pages in the supplemental as a percentage of the total seems to be better. Of course many different variables go into the mix and it is difficult to pin the rank of a site to one variable. However it does appear to be a trend so far.

Like you we have a client who has about 8000 pages dynamcially generated and much of those are in the supplemental. That is no easy task to improve.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

[benc007]

Theoretically, getting pages out of the SI should help rankings but I have not been able to prove this yet. Which command are you using to check pages in SI? These commands only work some of the time.

[AussieWebmaster]

I would leave things as they are.... what you really risk is the loss of long tail terms versus gaining PR that is used so little and may not impact your other pages and terms in the normal index.

[cass-hacks]

I think it is hard to say from just a ratio of Main/Supplemental indexed pages.

I have seen sites with a low ratio, i.e. many in Supplemental, that still rank well on their pages in the Main index and I have seen sites with a similar ratio that show up around page 5, i.e. not very well.

In an experiment I performed involving PageRank and the number of pages indexed, both Main and Supplemental, I removed a couple of pages from Google's index that had the highest number of inbound links across the entire site.

The number of pages total indexed dropped and the number in the Main index dropped but it wasn't until a certain point that rankings for terms and phrases on the remaining Main indexed pages dropped.

I can't say for sure that the drop in indexed pages and the drop in rankings were caused by the same thing but nothing else on the site had changed, Google wise, before or since and the site has always been rock steady in both indexed pages and SERPs.

In any event, while having pages in the Supplemental index seems to take terms and phrases on them that people might be searching for out of the possibility of showing up in SERPs and so having more pages in the Supplemental index means fewer chances to show up in the SERPs, the more important question would seem to be how are the pages still in the Main index doing.

I should add, don't block the pages in a robots.txt. Any PageRank they accrue will go into a black-hole. Instead, nofollow them from the "rest" of your site so that while they won't take PageRank from the "rest" of your site, any that they gain on their own via inbound links will flow back into your site.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

I am sorry that I will have to agree to disagree with you. You are not ranking well because or even if you have pages in the SI. They are other factors that boost your rankings. But they would be even better if you have eliminated the SI problems.

That is a fact.

I understand you believe that. However, this site used to have no pages in the SI and now does, but the rank has not changed and some of the pages continue to come up despire now being in SI exactly where they came up before.

MJ

[cass-hacks]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

... and some of the pages continue to come up despite now being in SI exactly where they came up before.

Google had said in the recent past that the difference between their Main index and Supplemental index was narrowing all the time.

Initially it was due to Supplemental pages being crawled more often and it was said that by the "end of summer" more searches would be drawing their results from the Supplemental index as well.

It could be that "the end of summer" is here!

Or, it could be that we just lost the last method for easily determining whether a page is in the Main index or not and therefore not being or being in the Supplemental.

Either way, Google never fails in keeping one guessing.

[T2DMan]

So what is the search on Google that shows supplemental results??? Google is of course no longer showing the label...

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by benc007

Which command are you using to check pages in SI?

One of them: Supplemental Pages, Results & Ratio

[fhlee]

Hi, I'm no guru on SEO, just doing some on my own... but this is my take:

The MORE pages you have on your site, you will have more links to your 'main page' (important). Each link on the 'unimportant' pages to your 'main page' is counted by Google, Supplemental or not. As such, I do not believe having a high ratio will hurt you. What's important is to have as many pages (note: pages, not link count per page) pointing to your 'important pages' as possible.

Now, my thought on why the 'highly ranked' sites tend to have lower ratio is actually reverse psychology... The fact that they have low supplemental ratio (which means most pages have good/reasonable PR) means there are many Good PR pages pointing to the 'Important Page', as such, the 'Important Page' tends to get more 'votes' from high PR pages thus pushing the ranking of the 'Important Pages'.

So, my believe is that Supplemental page ratio is not important. I'd think that it's beneficial to have as many pages pointing to the 'important pages'.


**However, from my understanding, Google no longer classify a page as Supplemental nowadays... think they made some 'patch' some months back to get rid of the 'Supplemental' tag.

P/S: Sorry for the 'crude' terms I use. Like I say, I'm no pro on this subject...

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by cass-hacks

but nothing else on the site had changed, Google wise, before or since and the site has always been rock steady in both indexed pages and SERPs.

But you did not tell us if Google might have changed something.

[cass-hacks]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

But you did not tell us if Google might have changed something.

Hmm, your choice of who you apply specific questions to and who you don't in almost exactly the same situation is interesting.

But, you are right, I didn't tell you.

[red]

WIGE,
I can only speak of my own experience here but I've made the SI results of my product pages "homework" for the past several weeks. Has it hurt my rankings? I'm not entirely sure but it HAS hurt my business.
I recognize that the results are entirely FAIR - it's my own fault that each page did not have at least one inbound link from another on the site. It's also my own fault that many of these products weren't considered important enough (by me) to rate fresh and interesting content.
These pages landed exactly where they should have. I lost sight of them but won't make the same mistake again.

While it is true that Google tried to take away the "stigma" of pages being dumped into the SI by removing the label it surely is intact and still makes a large impact.

A couple of people have wondered about which command to use to find out which of their pages are in the SI.
Here's one that works:
site:domain.com ***-asdfgh

You can type it right into the Google toolbar in the upper right text box or into Google itself.
They'll only list a few on the first page. Click on the text link that says
"If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

This will bring up every single page that has been dumped in the trash... though it's probably not the best way to conduct a search if you have a very large site.

Hope this helps and that you are able to do the work to get some of your results back to higher ground.

All the best!
RED

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

One of them: Supplemental Pages, Results & Ratio

I don't believe this works:
A. To find the total number of pages indexed by Google from your website: site:domain - Google Search

B. To find the total number of pages of your web site in the main index of Google: site:domain -inallurl:domain - Google Search

Both ways show the exact same number of pages.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by cass-hacks

Google had said in the recent past that the difference between their Main index and Supplemental index was narrowing all the time.

The reason they claim it's "narrowing" is because instead of doing the intelligent benign thing of taking millions of relevant useful white-hat pages out of the SI and putting them back into the main, they're maliciously totally deleting the pages that were in the SI. At least that's why I'm seeing and hearing.

So yes, the SI may be getting phased out, but also along with the pages in it!

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Clint1

I don't bel