Friday, January 1, 2010

Supplemental result entombs page

The supplemental index is said not to exist.

Then would they please delete the whole gawful, craptastic, abominable thing?

An entry in the supplemental results index is a doppelganger. For whatever reason, judgement is pronounced upon the page and the spell is cast upon it.

A doppelganger is a ghostly double of one that lives, and haunts its living counterpart. In folklore, the doppelganger is said to have no shadow or reflection, much like vampires in some traditions.

When the maker of SERPS nervously tries to add a page and sees the doppleganger, it runs in fright leaving the page to fend for itself. Only the stern warning from the Main Index "look, I've got nothing", can force the maker of SERPS to to include the doppelganger.

But note that asking the maker of SERPS to include the haunted page is asking too much. Also note that searchbots are loathe to crawl a page that has a doppleganger. It is only rarely possible to prod the lowly supplemental searchbot to go there. Changing the page content, or even changing the url cannot make the doppelganger go away.

It is an eternal spell and nobody will ever believe you. They'll just say "well, your page must be really crummy."

If you want a page to become supplemental, one sure-fire way is to change its url which will guarantee that the spell will be cast. So don't forget that cool urls never change.

All I can say about somebody that gets a supplemental result is "I pity the fool."

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