Suplemental Index Ratio:Google.com

[akanksha]

I am working on my site promotion. About 99% pagesof my site are in supplemental index of google. How can this effect my sites ranking. (right now PR of my site is 4). What all i can do to decrease this ratio.

[martty]

Given that Googe no longer label pages as coming from the supplemental index, how did you determine that 99% of your site is in the supplemental index?

[akanksha]

There are various tools through wich we can get the no of pages in supplemental index.
check out Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator

[martty]

Given that Googe no longer label pages as coming from the supplemental index, how can those tools determine that 99% of your site is in the supplemental index.

[akanksha]

May be they are using some technology or algorithm to find that, but main concern is not from where they get result, more important is what can we do to decrease this ratio.....i dont know in what respect it effects but this matter is noticeable.....because google first looks main index and if it did not find matching query then it goes to supplemental index that makes searchability low......So i am trying to get this ratio lowered so that more pages of my site come in searchability....

[wige]

If you pass a false query to Google you can get it to return only the pages that are listed in the main index. Subtract that from the number of pages in a site: query, and you get the number of pages in the supplemental directory.

Example:
site:mysite.com -> Shows the pages in the main and supplemental indices
site:mysite.com -xyz:mysite.com -> Shows the pages in the main index only

In my experience, pages in the supplementals do not harm the rank of pages that are not in the supplementals. However, the pages in the supps are probably pages that you do not want to be there. Typically the best way to get a page out of the supplementals is to get relevant inbound editorial links to those pages. This will signal to Google that these pages are deemed to important to be relegated to the supplemental index.

[bijan814]

Your site might have duplicates, and sometimes that results in supplemental page

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by wige

In my experience, pages in the supplementals do not harm the rank of pages that are not in the supplementals.

That is definitely not true. The site pages in the main index leak PR, as they are sharing PR with those pages being in the supplemental index. So that is harmful. That has nothing to do with experience, as it is a fact.

[inertia]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

The site pages in the main index leak PR, as they are sharing PR with those pages being in the supplemental index.

Are you saying, if there was some way to figure out which pages were in the supplemental then we could prevent PR being passed on to these pages and the main index pages would then have a higher PR?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by inertia

Are you saying, if there was some way to figure out which pages were in the supplemental then we could prevent PR being passed on to these pages and the main index pages would then have a higher PR?

That is exactly what I am saying.

[inertia]

How do we do that then?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by inertia

How do we do that then?

You probably have to hire an SEO who has experience with such issues, if no one can help you here...

[akanksha]

Thanks to all for suggestions....i would like to say that i am also a SEO (begginer) and trying to establish myself in this field......well i am now working on all the measurements and techniques that can be applied to achieve the target..............

[WDC]

Check this tool Search Engine Optimisation - SEO Company Services - SEO Expert: SEO Tool : Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator
Some tips to keep your suplemental index lower:

* Avoid duplicate content
* Write long posts
* Avoid linking at bad neighborhood
* Avoid excessive reciprocal links

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by wige

In my experience, pages in the supplementals do not harm the rank of pages that are not in the supplementals. However, the pages in the supps are probably pages that you do not want to be there. Typically the best way to get a page out of the supplementals is to get relevant inbound editorial links to those pages. This will signal to Google that these pages are deemed to important to be relegated to the supplemental index.

Originally Posted by Webnauts

That is definitely not true. The site pages in the main index leak PR, as they are sharing PR with those pages being in the supplemental index. So that is harmful. That has nothing to do with experience, as it is a fact.

I would have to agree with wige here:

A. The site pages in the main index might not leak PR - that would depend on how the site is set up.

B. I have sites where some pages have gone into the SI and the ranking for the site in the SERPs has not been affected. That is also a fact whether you agree or not.

Just my experience, MJ

[Webnauts]

A question for wige:

You said: "...supplementals do not harm the rank of page..."

Do you mean PageRank or ranking of a page?

A question for MJ:

Are you claiming that pages found in the main index which are linking to pages in the SI do not share PageRank with them?

[coolguy27]

What tool did you use to view your supplemental pages? Since Google disabled it months ago...

Originally Posted by akanksha

I am working on my site promotion. About 99% pagesof my site are in supplemental index of google. How can this effect my sites ranking. (right now PR of my site is 4). What all i can do to decrease this ratio.

[akanksha]

Originally Posted by coolguy27

What tool did you use to view your supplemental pages? Since Google disabled it months ago...

There are various tools through wich we can get the no of pages in supplemental index.
check out Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator

[innominds]

I think for diminishing Supplemental Index, we need to remove the duplicate content.

[wige]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

A question for wige:

You said: "...supplementals do not harm the rank of page..."

Do you mean PageRank or ranking of a page?

I meant the ranking of the page, I know some pagerank "bleeds" when links point to pages that are, for whatever reason, not in the main index. However, internal pagerank is something that is inherently manipulatable, because it is entirely in the control of the webmaster, and so seems to be, at best, a secondary ranking factor. I have a web site that has 98% supplemental ratio and I don't do anything to alter the flow of page rank on the site, but many of my landing pages perform quite well for very competitive terms.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

A. The site pages in the main index might not leak PR - that would depend on how the site is set up.

Well if that is what Wige met and you agree with him, I do not. I agree with Google though. Why? What is one of the major reason going into the supplemental results? Wasn't that duplicated content? I assume that you will agree with no further doubts.

So lets see what Google says about that, if you agree that Google is an authority in these terms:

Originally Posted by Google

Why should you care?
When search engines crawl identical content through varied URLs, there may be several negative effects:

1. Having multiple URLs can dilute link popularity. For example, in the diagram above, rather than 50 links to your intended display URL, the 50 links may be divided three ways among the three distinct URLs.

2. Search results may display user-unfriendly URLs (long URLs with tracking IDs, session IDs)
* Decreases chances of user selecting the listing
* Offsets branding efforts


How we help users and webmasters with duplicate content
We've designed algorithms to help prevent duplicate content from negatively affecting webmasters and the user experience.

1. When we detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, we group the duplicate URLs into one cluster.

2. We select what we think is the "best" URL to represent the cluster in search results.

3. We then consolidate properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL.

Consolidating properties from duplicates into one representative URL often provides users with more accurate search results.

Source: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Google, duplicate content caused by URL parameters, and you

- What do they mean with negative affects? If PR has nothing or only very little to do with rankings, what is the negative affect for webmasters?

- What do they mean with dilute link popularity? Isn't link popularity measured with the PageRank algorithm? If yes, does that have something to do with rankings? If not, what is the reason to worry about that? What is the problem if you dilute of link popularity? What are the effects?

- When they detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, they group the duplicate URLs into one cluster. Is that probably what we call supplemental index? If not, then what is that cluster?

Just wondering and pondering...

[akanksha]

I am also confused a lot......well what i have got till now is high supplemental ratio cannot effect your page rank(will not lower ur page rank)...but if you lower this ratio you can definetly get high page rank....isn't it.....

[inertia]

Originally Posted by akanksha

I am also confused a lot......

Yeah, me to. Surely one of the reasons a page goes into supps is low PR so by stopping PR flow to these pages you are subjecting them to supps forever? Or should if they are duplicate content they should be there anyway. Is this a case of us knowing which pages SHOULD be in supps and playing Google at its own game?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by akanksha

I am also confused a lot......well what i have got till now is high supplemental ratio cannot effect your page rank(will not lower ur page rank)

I never said that!!! Some others did though.

Originally Posted by akanksha

...but if you lower this ratio you can definetly get high page rank....isn't it.....

Yes!

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

A question for MJ:

Are you claiming that pages found in the main index which are linking to pages in the SI do not share PageRank with them?

Nope. I didn't say that ... I wrote:

The site pages in the main index might not leak PR - that would depend on how the site is set up.

In other words, PR might not be shared depending on the internal link structure - there could be no follow tags, for example ...

[Webnauts]

OK MJ. Then I probably have misunderstood you.

By the way, would you please be so kind and try to answer my questions in my previous post above? Or maybe someone else?

I am planning to write an article about the topic here.

[wige]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Well if that is what Wige met and you agree with him, I do not. I agree with Google though. Why? What is one of the major reason going into the supplemental results? Wasn't that duplicated content? I assume that you will agree with no further doubts.

So lets see what Google says about that, if you agree that Google is an authority in these terms:


Source: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Google, duplicate content caused by URL parameters, and you

- What do they mean with negative affects? If PR has nothing or only very little to do with rankings, what is the negative affect for webmasters?

- What do they mean with dilute link popularity? Isn't link popularity measured with the PageRank algorithm? If yes, does that have something to do with rankings? If not, what is the reason to worry about that? What is the problem if you dilute of link popularity? What are the effects?

- When they detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, they group the duplicate URLs into one cluster. Is that probably what we call supplemental index? If not, then what is that cluster?

Just wondering and pondering...

I am a bit confused on how this relates to the supplemental index. Duplicate content is one way for pages to end up there, yes, but only one. I have plenty of pages on my site with unique content in the SI. They are there because they have no incoming links, and because the pages are less important than my landing pages.

As I mentioned before, I hadn't really considered the effect on internal pagerank of pages being in the supplemental results. I only looked at the effect of a high supplemental ratio on the ranking of other pages, and I do not think internal links and internal PageRank are as important to ranking as PageRank from external links, because the flow of internal PageRank is so easy to manipulate. The quote above, regarding the negative effects arising from diluted link popularity could just as easily be a reference to external links than from internal links.

The reference to a cluster is not directly related to the supplemental index, although again, it does indicate one way that a page can end up there. My understanding from the document you linked, which is what I based much of my previous comments on, is as follows:

Your web site has a page, products.html. This page has information about all your products, and it can be sorted by product name or by price, using a query string (?sort=name or ?sort=price). Google now sees three pages (products.html, products.html?sort=name and products.html?sort=price) that all have identical or nearly identical content. If your default sort order is by name, products.html?sort=name is identical to products.html, and products.html?sort=price is nearly identical.
When Google creates a "node", it merges the three identical pages into one in the index, picking one URL that it will serve to queries and filtering out the others. (This should trigger the duplicate content filter and cause the remaining dupes to be deindexed, but if there is some variance in the pages the other pages may go to the supplemental index. In this example, because of simplicity of the URL and the likelyhood that it has the most incoming external links, products.html would most likely be the main page for the node, products.html?sort=name would be deindexed, and products.html?sort=price would go to the SI if it is not deindexed.) Google then takes all the inbound links pointing to that group of pages, and treats it like a 301, merging all the PageRank into the one page it deems best.

I read this to mean two things. One, if your page is in the supplementals because of duplicate content, you may not bleed pagerank because the page is merged with a more authoritative version, and if your page is seen as completely duplicated it probably won't even go into the supplementals at all.

[Webnauts]

The thread starter asked:

I am working on my site promotion. About 99% pagesof my site are in supplemental index of google. How can this effect my sites ranking. (right now PR of my site is 4). What all i can do to decrease this ratio.

As an SEO I am sure I did not go off topic. But if it is perceived that way, please accept my apologies.

Anyway, I assume that there are many mods/members here who can give the respective member here some straightforward tips to solve his problems. I am sorry but I do not have the time, because since today I am assigned as a mod at another SEO forum, where they consider me as highly qualified for that position, something that did not happen here. I think you know already that I have been de-moded here last summer, because I did not qualify for this forum.

Peace and good luck,

John

[mjtaylor]

More on the SI ... whether it matters (and how to get out if you think it does) here: Supplementals: Not What They Used to Be ....

Cheers, MJ