Supplemental pages, bad or not bad?

Ferre · 03-08-2007, 06:16 AM

Lately I encounter a lot of talk about supplemental pages and usually in the context of being bad for seo.

This made me really wonder if it is all that bad or just an unfunded fear. As far as I can see it only doesn't count duplicate content on your sites as extra indexed pages but will still index one of the versions of a page with the content, and show it in the serps for relevant searches so what's the big deal?

ninjashoes · 03-08-2007, 10:17 AM

I have experienced both the original and copy being put into supplemental

Ferre · 03-09-2007, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ninjashoes

I have experienced both the original and copy being put into supplemental

Could be a glitch no? I have not experienced that. In fact I have experienced the opposite more, when both versions stay indexed. Anyway, the question was (when it works as intended) if it really hurts seo or not. And if it hurts, how?

peteinoz2 · 03-10-2007, 03:45 AM

it does hurt a lot more in competitive markets.

you will find it very difficult to rank highly for competitive terms with pages that are in the supps..

type any competitive term in G, or even vaguely competitive.. you will never see an entry on the front page that has supps

For much less competitive terms you can still do very well with pages included in the sup's directory.

pete

cessai · 03-10-2007, 10:22 AM

as far as i know, supplemental means a duplicate copy. so yes, it can hurt.

ninjashoes · 03-10-2007, 07:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ferre

Could be a glitch no? I have not experienced that. In fact I have experienced the opposite more, when both versions stay indexed. Anyway, the question was (when it works as intended) if it really hurts seo or not. And if it hurts, how?

Hmm, it seems like a bad sign to me, it seems like the pages that go supplemental are deemed as unimportant. I heard before some people on this forum and others having their main page going supp and it was suggested maybe it was a dupe content issue.

I have heard that pages that go supp are working their way out of googles index. If you main page is fine and the majority of others are I would say its nothing to worry about.

charlesgan · 03-11-2007, 01:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ferre

Lately I encounter a lot of talk about supplemental pages and usually in the context of being bad for seo.

This made me really wonder if it is all that bad or just an unfunded fear. As far as I can see it only doesn't count duplicate content on your sites as extra indexed pages but will still index one of the versions of a page with the content, and show it in the serps for relevant searches so what's the big deal?

are you talking about VRE kind of stuffing pages?
well, i got 2 experimenting site for 3 months, and with hundred of niche keyword page. fact is, they dont help as i see.

good is to focus on quality content, and make it useful for human, not bot.