site:www.mydomain.ltd ***Most of the headlines are about how much "waste" google is storing about itself (site:www.google.com **) , but this hack is very useful for checking competitors and clients. Google, however, is far from the largest entity in supplemental results index. For example, Amazon has a whoping 15 - 64+ million pages (depending if you are checking with or without www.) in the supplemental index, and MySpace is in range of 5-71 million pages.
i.e. SEOmoz, Skype, DMOZ
Checking the Number of Supplemental Results for a Specific Domain
Search Engines
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
There's a new Google hack (or something I was not aware of) in town, and I'm in love with it. It allows you to see an estimate of how many pages in a specific domain are supplemental results. To see the hack in action, just type the following at Google:
Hmmm.... seems to be working here. Can someone please run this query and let me know what it tells you - I think I am a bit confused.
Here's an example:
site:https://remote-backup.com **
returns about 71 pages in supplemental.
BUT....
If I search for the keyword associated with one of those supplemental page listings (such as "CD RW backup", our page is in the top 20 results in Google as a non-supplemental result...
what gives?
This doesn't seem to work for me anymore?
yep... it seems to be gone now... it was fun while it lasted.
A while ago, I used another (quite similar) hack to check supplementals:
site:www.domain.tld "*"
It stopped working a few months ago. I am glad someone found another hack as it is interesting.
The bold titles are a bit strange. I did not get them with my former query.
Is it normal to have pages that no longer exist after a year in the supplemental result?
On the lighter side what you're saying having supplemental results is not really a bad thing?
Is it normal to have pages that no longer exist after a year in the supplemental result?
The oldest "historic data" I've seen has been several years old... With these cases it's good to have "quality" 404 pages (or do some server side redirects to show user something "relevant")-
Thanks 2K. this whole supp result issue is enough to drive one insane.
Did anyone check into the remote backup site I posted earlier? I am still somewhat perpelexed as to why my results are supplemental AND primary... is anyone else seeing this weirdness?
site can also be accessed via https://remote-backup.com - or you can use that as your link: command in Google.
thanks for any assistance.
Are you referring to site:https://remote... vs. site:https://www.remote... difference.
If so, I'd recommend reading this entry from matt cutts.
great post - was useful while it worked :-(
Thanks for sharing.
my site is doing good. but when i dried this hack i found most of the pages of my site are in supplemental result. what reason might have been there that dragging my site in the supplemental result.
i know only premium member can ask question. but is there anyone who can tell me what exactly fetching my site in the supplemental result.
.
Duplicate content of course.
Do good interlinking and get some quality links from authority sites to those particular pages in the supplemental index.
:D
Wheres the money?
This hack no longer works, guys. It was OK last week. Not OK now. Sigh...
So, if I understand this correctly:
pages showing up within the list of "supplemental results" are pages googlebot choked on and couldn't properly index? or am I missing something?
~SD
not so simple...
First google's official definition of supplemental result/index:
A supplemental result is just like a regular web result, except that it's pulled from our supplemental index. We're able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.
If you're a webmaster, please note that the index in which a site is included is completely automated; there's no way to select or change the index in which a site appears. Please also be assured that the index in which a site is included doesn't affect its PageRank.
My definition of supplementals is somewhat more practical and based on case scenarios:
- page no longer exists, but google founds it unique and stores for possible use (page is supplemental due to it's historical value)
- page exists, but it's currently orphaned or too deep inside the site (page is supplemental due to very low page rank)
-page exists, but it can't be properly indexed due to server/http errors,complex url's etc issues. (page is supplemental due to an indexing problem)
- page exists, but it is a duplicate/similar with other pages with more strength (page is supplemental due to an content issue)
Softplus (a forum member at Cre8asite) has just made a Supplemental page checking tool.
His explanation of the tool: It takes your domain, passes it as a "site:domain.com ***" query to Google and extracts the total "approximate" count as well the effective real count (if less than 1000, it goes to the last page of the results and checks).
It is really not that new, Search Engines WEB has been using that trick for quite some time - the only difference is that instead of putting in: *** with a space before the first * - the following acheived the same results: *.*
There are also other combinations that will bring up some interesting SERPs
I am totally lost after using this. Few months ago my site came out of supplemental hell and gained a PR 7, But now this hack shows the home page as supplemental though still having PR 7. Anyhow thanks for the hack.
Nice tip 2k - thanks!
Ha! Noticed that and have seen it before a few times!
Might be an idea to adjust the feed template - at the moment it displays the authors email address and not their name. Always thought that was a bit odd, especially when you click through to the site, you get their name linked to their email.
That might help a little. But for those who miss the author's name on the blog and in your case, your little graphic, well I'm not sure if there's any hope... :P
"...at the moment it displays the authors email address and not their name. "
This might explain why I receive occasional emails with words "Dear rand, could you..."
We've been thinking about adding a "Guest Post" in front of the titles to help people clearly delineate.
Wow... this is an amazin new hack! I love it, where does THAT come from
I see
- a signal to Google - I'm SEOing that domain - a great way for a new quality indicator - supplemental percent - this whole hack to only work for a few months until google will cripple it like all other SEO tools
cheers-christoph
I notice two things:
1.) In Google I do not have a single incorrect supplemental I would argue with.
2.) Google is doing an extremely good job of finding who originates content today.
But this is old news...
But rand cud u tell me what purpose will it serve us as my site on which i'm working has got lot of dynamic links which are displayed in supplemental results.
Ok in short if there are a whole lot of supplemental than ur compititors, what does thst indicate?
Thanx in advance.
Christy - The blog entry above was actually written by our guest blogger, 2K a famous Finnish SEO.
Supplemental probably deserves an entire blog entry of its own, and its actually an area where I'd like to encourage user feedback. I'll try to get it done in the next day or two.
"But rand..."
... not again... This blog has currently 9 authors, and I would deeply appreciate if all moz-readers would place some *additional effort* to check who wrote what (or maybe matt/oatmeal could add even larger pictures of authors to follow headlines ;).
I ask kindly.Please.
"what purpose will it serve"
Lots of supplementals = there is or has been some sort of indexing issue with site in question.
2k - Can I ask what you consider "Lots of supplementals"?
I'd say anything above 10% of live site size alarming, unless there are justifications.
And with justifications I mean that either site architechture or site content has changed drasticly in the past (this is the 3rd possible reason for supplementals).
For example we run few auction sites, and every month there are thousands of product pages with very short lifespan. This leads to these sites having a huge supplemental index.