Omar Kattan - search in a nutshell

Google has opened its Middle East and North Africa (MENA) office in Cairo (capital of Egypt).  The official press release stated that it has done so to be able to better serve the over 300 Million Arab speakers in that part of the world.

Google’s MENA office opening also coincides with the recently-launched Arabic versions of three of its major applications; Google News, Gmail and Google Earth.

If you’re wondering why Google chose Egypt and not Dubai or Jordan for instance (it’s not the food!), according to Madar Research, 12.4 million users are expected to be online in Egypt by the year 2010.

Good luck Google.. oh and btw, if you’re looking for someone to run your Cairo office, you know who to call ;-).

Supplemental results, have you heard this term before?  If you haven’t I’ll tell you, its Google’s secondary index, a place where the big G stores all the pages of your site that it doesn’t think are worth being in its main index.

What’s the difference between supplemental and regular results?  A supplemental result  is clearly identified by Google in the actual listing,  see the screenshot below:

How can you tell how many of your pages are indexed by Google?  Simple… Type (site:www.your-site.com) in the Google search box and Google will display all your site’s pages listed in its index.

How can you tell how many of your site’s pages are in the supplemental listings? Again, simple… type (site:www.your-site.com *** -sjpked) in the google search box and Google will display all the pages that are in its supplemental listing.

Here is a formula that gives you an indication of your site’s health:

site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked
___________________________________   X  100

site:www.yoursite.com

The next obvious question you should now ask is how do I get my site’s pages out of the supplimental listings and into Google’s main index?  Very simple… make sure all your pages have original title tags and distinct meta tags.  Also, try and build links towards all your pages, not just the home page.

Here is what Matt Cutts of Google fame has to say about supplemental results:

If you have questions about supplemental results feel free to ask here.