Huge decrease in backlinks and pages indexed

[Dani]

Have noticed a huge drop in backlink count and pages indexed this week. Anyone else notice this? Has it affected traffic from the engines for you?

[stymiee]

There are more and people talking about the same thing (plus PR fluctuations). I noticed fewer pages being reported as blocked in my Google Webmaster Tool account. Seems like Google is up to something.

[BamaStangGuy]

My backlinks have stayed the same, I have exactly 666 backlinks showing via the link: tool. See, Google is evil :D.

However! I have noticed a nice freshness of their site: query. It now shows all my updated urls and NONE of them are supplemental. Not to mention that I am beginning to rank decent for targeted keywords :)

So yes I have noticed a difference but mine was positive.

[stymiee]

I still have almost every page in the supplemental index so the fact that 75% of my pages are gone doesn't bother me. Hopefully I fair as well as you and finally get into the real index.

[Dani]

What's the difference between the real index and supplemental index?

[stymiee]

The supplemental index is only slightly better then being banned. Pages in it are only shown after Google has displayed sites in its regular index. For most terms that means never being in the SERPs at all.

How you get in the supplemental index is anyone's guess although there is no shortage of theories (of course). Same goes for how to get out.

[Dani]

What about sites that half some pages in the regular index and some in the supplemental? Are the pages in the supplemental index just not worthy of being indexed?

[stymiee]

Hard to say. There doesn't seem to be a set criteria as for what goes supplemental and what doesn't. Duplicate content seems to trigger it, but there is plenty of original content that is supplemental as well. A lot of people consider it worse then being banned because at least when you are banned you know why and can get it fixed. When you're supplemental, you're kind of in limbo.

[Junior Matt]

What about sites that half some pages in the regular index and some in the supplemental? Are the pages in the supplemental index just not worthy of being indexed?

The main reason for supplemental result is,

1. The web page no longer exists, but it’s still in Google’s index
2. A web page is orphaned with no internal links pointing to it or buried too deep to be crawled regularly
3. Indexing issues due to redirect, java script navigation or too many parameters in the URL or SessionIDs are used
4. A duplicate page exists somewhere on the same website or externally
5. The page contains the same Title, and META tags as many other pages on the website
6. Not enough internal or external inbound links to give weight to the page
7. Hundreds of unrelated external links on one page

[pb2006]

Indexed pages of search engines often change, day by day. don't worry.

[stymiee]

The main reason for supplemental result is,

1. The web page no longer exists, but it’s still in Google’s index
2. A web page is orphaned with no internal links pointing to it or buried too deep to be crawled regularly
3. Indexing issues due to redirect, java script navigation or too many parameters in the URL or SessionIDs are used
4. A duplicate page exists somewhere on the same website or externally
5. The page contains the same Title, and META tags as many other pages on the website
6. Not enough internal or external inbound links to give weight to the page
7. Hundreds of unrelated external links on one page

Most of this is untrue.

1. The web page no longer exists, but it’s still in Google’s index

If Google has identified the page no longer exists why would they make it supplemental instead of removing it completely? Do you really think Google would intentionally send visitors to a page that doesn't exist?

2. A web page is orphaned with no internal links pointing to it or buried too deep to be crawled regularly

This means nothing to Google. Not having incoming links will hurt the page's chance of ranking well as we all know how important those are to Google. But not having any will not result in being in the supplemental index. Plus, how many pages actually have no incoming links? Even better, if they don't have any incoming links how does Google know about them?

3. Indexing issues due to redirect, java script navigation or too many parameters in the URL or SessionIDs are used

Redirects will cause a page to be completely missed. If Google can't follow the redirect they can't index the page and it can't be supplemental as a result.

JavaScript navigation only causes difficulty in getting other internal pages indexed because Google can't follow the links. But they won't cause a page with javascript navigation to go supplemental.

Pages with complex/long query strings or session IDs will just not be indexed. That's it. Having long query strings indicates nothing about the page's quality and will not cause it to go supplemental.

5. The page contains the same Title, and META tags as many other pages on the website

The same <title> is a likely cause. But the same meta tags is just a rumor that is unsubstantiated. Especially when you consider Google doesn't use meta tags in their algorithm.

6. Not enough internal or external inbound links to give weight to the page

That will just cause the page to rank poorly. It won't cause it to go supplemental.

7. Hundreds of unrelated external links on one page

This may be true but it is possible it is not. Matt Cutts touched upon unrelated links once but it was more about linking to unrelated spammy sites and he indicated this would affect ranking as opposed to making a page go supplemental.

[BamaStangGuy]

This is a good article on Supplementals: http://www.jimboykin.com/damned-to-google-hell-supplemental-results/

[russianzio]

Google has been showing the same 38 backlinks for my site for the past 2 years while yahoo msn, over 1000. I've done some serious work 2-3 months ago in link exchange and now have over 5ooo backlinks pointing to my site devided by 3 search engines.
But Google has not improved it's idea about my site since 2 years ago, still 38 backlinks... I have changed the whole topic of the site, have done so much SEO work about it with the new keywords ets. Google is still showing the links to my old-style site. I am starting to get confused )))

[russianzio]

Oh yes, almost forgot, the pages and content of my old-fashion site do not exist, Google still thinks they do... I am talking about 3 months of sending people to nonexisting pages ))))) Google NonSense again

[Dani]

Google has been showing the same 38 backlinks for my site for the past 2 years while yahoo msn, over 1000. I've done some serious work 2-3 months ago in link exchange and now have over 5ooo backlinks pointing to my site devided by 3 search engines.
But Google has not improved it's idea about my site since 2 years ago, still 38 backlinks... I have changed the whole topic of the site, have done so much SEO work about it with the new keywords ets. Google is still showing the links to my old-style site. I am starting to get confused )))

Are you noticing Google sending more traffic to your site, though? Because Google's visible backlink count is always rarely updated, oldish data.

[russianzio]

All the traffic is from yahoo and msn, may be 1% google. yahoo and msn are fast and great to put my keywords in the 1st ten resaults but the ammount of visitors they send is so low in comparison to google. For example, if you type in Yahoo such difficult to raise keywords as "D&G discounts" or "Prada discounts" or "Armani discounts" my site is number one, i am nowhere to be found in google ((((

[stymiee]

All the traffic is from yahoo and msn, may be 1% google. yahoo and msn are fast and great to put my keywords in the 1st ten resaults but the ammount of visitors they send is so low in comparison to google. For example, if you type in Yahoo such difficult to raise keywords as "D&G discounts" or "Prada discounts" or "Armani discounts" my site is number one, i am nowhere to be found in google ((((

That's because Google's algorithm is far more advanced the Yahoo and MSN at this point. they're years behind Google although they are making up ground.

[Candy_ME]

You should definitely be showing at least 10 BLs (or more) per day with your low weight. The DP BLs are based on G results. Don't focus solely on G as the G BLs are not updated as frequently as one would expect. I would recommend that you use other tools to check how your BLs are doing across all the major SEs (MSN, Yahoo etc). Try using these tools as well as the DP tools:

[stymiee]

A better tool for seeing backlinks to your own site would be Google Webmaster Tools. It will tell you a much more complete picture of your backlinks for your site.

[mitz]

I have noticed a drop in backlinks and also indexed pages. A drop of nearly 100 on the indexed pages..
It hasn't changed anything though.