We have a discussion going on in the ASC forum about Google supplemental results issues for WordPress sites. Some people are getting a high percentage of supplemental results for their content.
I even have a high percentage of pages in supplemental results. Which I didn’t know until today for 2 reasons:
1. I never check.
2. I get so much traffic from Google it never occurred to me that a lot of my content might be in the dead zone.
When I look at the results in the [tag-tec]supplemental index[/tag-tec] in Google, I find a lot of pages that are not relevant to the discussion I have going on currently, very old pages, and just plain weird pages. Still there are some pages in there that aren’t duplicate content that I’d like to get out of Google Hell.
I assume since Google has tackled research like building a “space elevator” that they would have already figured out that the world’s most-used blog platform, WordPress, along with any other blog platform, is simply a database query and reporting tool.
That is, all the data for this site is in a database. This post you are reading is the only occurrence of this information in my database. Yet it can be accessed in different ways and with different urls. This post will show up in a category result, a tags page result, on-site search result, and so on. But it is still just one unique piece of content. Rocket science aside, seems like an issue that’s fairly easy to resolve on Google’s end. But they haven’t done it yet.
So I don’t have duplicate content on this site or in my database, I just have several different ways the same content can be accessed.
So do the millions of other bloggers and database content management systems in action around the web. Why then do people have such high supplemental results ratios?
I’ve decided to ask around, starting here, to see if any of the uber geeks who read my blog have insight on this issue. Please do comment and give your input including any plugins anyone may have done (or are working on. Hint Hint) that would block robots from going down all the pathways that are available in WordPress to the same content.
Update: A WordPress plugin you can check out is called “Duplicate Content Cure.” Be careful telling this thing to “no follow no index” categories or tag results pages. Google lists a lot of the tag results pages and category pages higher for me because, I assume, there’s better keyword density for all my results for a keyword (tag) search than any individual post by itself in that category.
Be careful that the “cure” doesn’t make you sicker and really read and understand what you are blocking robots from indexing to make sure you aren’t cutting off good results you already have.
Have you used this plugin? Tell us your results below!
One of our coaches found some interesting articles on the subject. Here is one that talks about the DuPrevent plugin and an example Robot.txt file he uses to help prevent spiders looking at the same things in your database twice. (Read the comments for a correction a person submitted about this guy’s robots.txt file)
This is all that is happening essentially so don’t start feeling like you are on a bad platform for publishing. This is Google’s problem, not yours. You just need to fix it because waiting on them to is out of the question.
ASIDE: Google even puts Blogger.com blog pages in supplemental results. So they don’t have this figured out yet even on their own system, lol.
Chime In! (Google reps welcome!)
How are YOUR supplemental results and what have you done to your WordPress or other blog system to prevent [tag-tec]supplemental results[/tag-tec] in Google? Comments welcome and appreciated…