Google Supplemental Index Re-Visited

Reference: Blogrepreneur.com

When Google announced to merge its indices in December 2007 a deep sigh of relieve filled cyberspace. And webmasters near and far, watched their web pages once again resurfacing from the crevices of hell, known also as the supplemental index. Introduced in 2003, the purpose of the supplemental index was to lighten the load on Google’s search engine by classifying web content. With supplemental tagging in place, much of the web was pushed into the supplemental index and matched only when a search phrase called for it. Further more, Page Rank scores, duplicate content, 404 errors among other factors, determined the fate of the crawled documents placing them accordingly. No more! After four years, indices merged, and now once again, Google calls upon its entire database to match queries with pertinent listings. Sounds good, yet after initially rejoicing, you may wonder how will the merging of the two indices affect your pages SERP (Search Engine Results Page) now that the competition has risen from the ashes, adding billions more pages? Perhaps Google doesn’t love us, after all. Probably so!

First and foremost, Google loves its’ users. Users comprise of businesses, students, shoppers, and families. They connect to the Internet via devices, and it is probably safe to say that 5.6k modems are becoming more of a novelty. Today, most users connect via high speed cable, satellite, and using mobile devices. They drive powerful machines (desktops, laptops) with plenty of RAM (Random Access Memory) and storage, measured in gigabytes. They interact with peers in real time and add their own content to the web with video, blogs, posts, music, and photos. They individually and collectively contribute to a moldable active web rather than staring at a static one.
Reason enough to challenge Google’s ever evolving new services, gadgets, and open source projects etc. Yes, even Google needs to expand and fine tune its services all the time. That’s why I am not surprised that Google terminating the superfluous index in favor to its entire database, enabling to collect and compare a world of information rather than just a sliver of it. Now let’s get to the question of how Google’s powerful new search capability affects web pages. I say, aside from eliminating the stigma of the supplemental index, not much has changed. Proportions have changed, that’s all - more pages more results. The good news is, RSS feeds don’t get indexed any longer, reducing duplicate content automatically for your websites or blogs. Yet as before, good pages will make it to the top of the Google index; others may end up on the SERP #365,000 or so. In summary, the problems that sunk pages into the supplemental index or hell, so to speak, still remain. Although, those low ranking pages are once again in the system, making it much easier for the webmaster to get them back on track to Google’s first page.

Oh well, wouldn’t you rather deal with the competition than trying to rescue pages out of a sand box never knowing all the little secrets on why they have gotten there in the first place? I would! What do you think?

For good Google SERPs do the following:
=> Keyword/keyword phrase research
=> Include keyword/phrase in title

Avoid duplicate content:
=> Publish original content
=> Redirect http://site.com – to http://www.site.com (* see WP plugIn)
=> Edit robots.txt file to pages you don’t want spidered and indexed (admin or about pages)