How to tell supplemental pages

[ldylion214]

Hi,
I'm new here. I just finished reading the article about pages being in the supplemental index on google. My question is how do we find out how many and which pages are in supp?
Best, Nicci

PS. I'm going to continue reading here so forgive me if this has been addressed. This is a good forum. I'm glad I found it.

[Phil Staff]

Welcome to the forum ldylion214!

First let me say that your site is indexed in Google and I found one of your links pages indexed here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=www.tribeazure.com%2Flink .

I found one major problem that isn't related to the supplemental index but should be brought to your attention.

If you view the link above and see your description of the Arizona Links category shows some VB/ASP code instead of a good description. This appears to be because there is some VB/ASP code is on a .htm page.

ASP code only works with .asp pages. If you change the extension on your links pages to be .asp instead of .htm it should resolve this issue. This should help your links pages get indexed.

Additionally you should consider adding some meta tags to your links pages. For example, LinksManager users have controls to add different meta descriptions for each category page. This way the search engines will use the description you want instead of just pulling the first sentence from your code.

Ok now onto your original question:

There is no longer a way to find out "for sure" how many pages are in the supplemental index.

There used to be a way where you would just enter:

site:www.sitename.com *** -view

and it would show you all the supplemental results; however, this feature has since been removed by Google.

Here is a good article about this subject: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-please-bring-back-the-supplemental-results-query-its-incredibly-valuable .

Hopefully this is helpful.

Phil

[The Old Sarge]

Thanks, Phil. I found that very helpful and useful.

[ldylion214]

Welcome to the forum ldylion214!

First let me say that your site is indexed in Google and I found one of your links pages indexed here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=www.tribeazure.com%2Flink .

I found one major problem that isn't related to the supplemental index but should be brought to your attention.

If you view the link above and see your description of the Arizona Links category shows some VB/ASP code instead of a good description. This appears to be because there is some VB/ASP code is on a .htm page.

ASP code only works with .asp pages. If you change the extension on your links pages to be .asp instead of .htm it should resolve this issue. This should help your links pages get indexed.

Additionally you should consider adding some meta tags to your links pages. For example, LinksManager users have controls to add different meta descriptions for each category page. This way the search engines will use the description you want instead of just pulling the first sentence from your code.

Ok now onto your original question:

There is no longer a way to find out "for sure" how many pages are in the supplemental index.

There used to be a way where you would just enter:

site:www.sitename.com *** -view

and it would show you all the supplemental results; however, this feature has since been removed by Google.

Here is a good article about this subject: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-please-bring-back-the-supplemental-results-query-its-incredibly-valuable .

Hopefully this is helpful.

Phil
Hi Phil,
Thank you for the info. Yesterday I worked on making alot of my .htm pages into .asp after I read your response. I am hesitant tho to redo the http://tribeazure.com/Link/links.htm because it has a PR3. I don't personally care but there are 2 links exchanges I have on there for the sole reason it has a page rank. I'm sure the .asp will get indexed but I'm not sure how long it takes. That seems to vary.
Best, Nicci

[Phil Staff]

Thank you for your response.

You do not "have" to change the url. There isn't anything wrong with using an extenstion of .htm is there?

If you are greatly concerned about your PR on that page then leave it as it is; however, note that PR fluctuates wildly and cannot be relied upon as the "only" measure of the quality of a site. PR is only one small factor in the whole algorithm.

You said your links pages are located here: http://tribeazure.com/Link/links.htm .

While that may be a PR3 right now I have seen many sites that use the word 'Link' or 'Links' in their url find their PR is lowered or their pages moved to supplemental or even removed.

We have two other sites that are very similar in genre, scope, size and date online.

Site A uses the word 'resources' in the url for the links pages.

Site B site uses the word 'links' in the url of the links pages.

Site A's links pages urls with 'resources' are in Google's index.

Site B's links pages urls with 'links' aren't in the index at all.

Additionally Site B gets much more traffic then Site A so you would think it would be indexed. We are [obviously] changing our links pages on Site B to remove the word links.

I am not saying that Google will downgrade your pages solely because you use the word 'link'; however, there are many unethical programs that use directories with that word and I wouldn't want Google to think for even an instant that I would be doing that.

In the end the final decision is yours. You can keep the url the way it is or change it. You could just leave the page the way it is and call your other links pages 'resources'. Then when the 'resources' page is PR3 and the other page isn't needed you can remove it or use a 301 redirect to tell them you permanently moved the page.

Hopefully that makes sense and is helpful. The only hard part about these decisions is there isn't any real way to know the outcome until months after the changes are made. PR is known to be updated only a few times per year or less depending on your industry.

Phil Staff

[ldylion214]

Thank you, Phil,
I wondered why so many sites now use "resource" instead of "link". I'll need to create the redirect. I just don't like seeing so many of my pages in the SI. I've been working on my site trying to fix some fundamental issues. I did also take care of that code problem you brought to my attention. Thanks again!
Best, Nicci