Supplemental Results - an explanation

Supplemental Results are a feature of Google where, after a search string has been entered, the results display ’supplemental results’ next to the description.

Pages marked as ‘Supplemental Results’ are as a result of Google caching the page on their auxiliary index which as you would deduce means that Google stores pages on two databases, their main database and the auxiliary.

Pages cached in the auxiliary database tend to have longer urls and can take you deeper into a website than the non supplemental results. A major benefit of this is that keywords / phrases deep within a site are more likely to be found.

There is a downside though and unfortunately the downside seems to outweigh the positive. If you discover your site has supplemental results it tends to point to one of three reasons. Firstly, you may have duplicate content on your site which should be changed immediately. Second, your page may not have a link to it within your internal navigation and unless there’s a reason for this, it isn’t such a complex job to create a link to it. Thirdly, your content may be poor and lack volume. As per previous blogs, good content is vital to a successful SEO campaign.

To conclude, if you do find you have supplementary results on google, check for the above and act quickly to put these right. Whilst in itself supplementary results are not harmful, they often act as good indicators that other problems exist on your site.

Peter Williams
Senior Programmer

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