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Deleting Supplemental Pages
For those of us who got carried away making too many pages that went supplemental (from lack of pagerank) what happens if we delete those pages?
If Google judges content not worthy, is it trash or is it simply not getting enough pagerank to remain in the main index? Well, that question has already been answered, but what about this?
If we remove ALL pages that have gone supplemental will the small amount of pagerank (we currently have) work better for us?
On second thought, is that exactly what supplemental pages do? In other words, supplemental results allow current content to rank in hopes it brings in some measurable human interest in the form of links/pagerank? Brilliant!
It appears that pagerank is finite because if you had enough ALL pages would stay out of the trash bin.
In other news as seen below, “universal search” is really paying off for Matt Cutts, what a spammer! ;)
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July 23rd, 2007 at 9:40 pm
I think it’s just because you removed your blogroll. ;)
Seriously, this issue never bothered me much. I’ve seen supplemental content rank for a bunch of stuff that has brought me traffic and main index content bring me bugger all.
July 24th, 2007 at 10:05 am
I have had only five incoming searches from Google today for my home and garden site that went supplemental (this site is fine because of all the stupid links pointing at it), believe me, when you go supplemental Google is cutting the chord. Supplementals mean, “we do not want your content” cluttering our spammy index.
Here is the lame part:
You can write the most useful, informational article on something BUT if it exists on a site with few incoming links (but several pages) it is a dead document. This is how stupid Google has become, I will no longer defend them in this area because I got sites that prove their obsession with incoming links/pagerank.
It has absolutely nothing to do with quality, if you have many pages you better have obtained many links, period.
Do a little test (I have!) take a document that is in supplementals and move it to a site with enough pagerank, it will outrank the best because it is in fact the best! Now move it to a website that has no links/pagerank, watch it get thrown in the trash. Ain’t it great? Not!!!
July 24th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Hey,
Great information, and I am sort of agreeing with Adam. But, I would suggest to keep testing things out and let me know your results.
Thanks for your time,
Matt Mcfalling
July 28th, 2007 at 11:14 am
That’s an interesting theory about pagerank. I was just testing some of the pages listed as supplemental on W3c under site command and when I actually search for the page using the page title every one of them is not supplemental on live search.
I wouldn’t delete pages if there supplemental unless it was a duplicated page.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:46 pm
An interesting experiment on the topic of the Supplemental index, http://cass-hacks.com/bits_n_bytes/pagerank_index/
An interesting side effect, is that one of the pages that became Supplemental of course was no longer found in the SERPs at the #8 - 10 position it had been since it was first published but at the same time, the entrance page, which contained a brief abstract of the full article became listed instead.
But, if Google reports of the Supplemental index being fully done away with are true, http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/supplemental-goes-mainstream.html by the end of this Summer, Supplemental should have gone the way of the Dodo. Unfortunately until that time, we are not only still living under the cloud of the Supplemental index but now, we can’t even see when we are under it, at least not without jumping through hoops to find which pages are Supplemental using other techniques. :-(