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Quote:When Google originally introduced Supplemental Results in 2003, our main web index had billions of web pages. The supplemental index made it possible to index even more web pages and, just like our main web index, make this content available when generating relevant search results for user queries...

Since 2006, we've completely overhauled the system that crawls and indexes supplemental results. The current system provides deeper and more continuous indexing. Additionally, we are indexing URLs with more parameters and are continuing to place fewer restrictions on the sites we crawl. As a result, Supplemental Results are fresher and more comprehensive than ever. We're also working towards showing more Supplemental Results by ensuring that every query is able to search the supplemental index, and expect to roll this out over the course of the summer.

The distinction between the main and the supplemental index is therefore continuing to narrow. Given all the progress that we've been able to make so far, and thinking ahead to future improvements, we've decided to stop labeling these URLs as "Supplemental Results." Of course, you will continue to benefit from Google's supplemental index being deeper and fresher.

Quote:Ready to be angry and upset that Google is preventing you from knowing a key status indicator of your pages? Hang on, because there's hope on two different fronts.

First, as the blog post explains, by the end of summer, there should be less difference between the supplemental index and the main one. Google is promising that every query should hit both indexes at the same time, so that a page in supplemental really should have a better chance of ranking than in the past. Google's also said freshness has increased, so that no page in the supplemental index is more than three months out of date and that this might be reduced to only a month in the future.

Of course, saying freshness has increased to being only "three months old" is kind of a contradiction. It's true that many pages in the supplemental index won't change very often. But some do, so it would be good for Google to step up an event faster crawl of supplementals and kick more of them out into the main index, as warranted...