A post, by Michael Martinez, about how the supplemental index negatively effects Google site search got me thinking about how this:
Back in the old days a search, particularly an entertainment related search, was very likely to return a number of sites on free web hosts such as Tripod and Geocities. Created back in the days when domains and hosting were hideously expensive these free hosted sites often gained a lot of links and became highly visible in the search engine results. Sometimes these sites on free hosts would outrank corporate pages and sites by SEO’s. Needless to say SEO’s and corporate interests hated them.
A few years ago Google decided to deemphasize anything on a free host in the SERPS. Sure they probably still get some traffic for long search strings but for shorter searches you rarely see a free site in Google. Yahoo seems to have copied this because in my unscientific tests I do not see many listings in the top Yahoo SERP’s either. However, I do see free hosted sites in both the Live.com and Ask.com SERP’s so maybe those engines are not screening free hosts as heavily.
So what?
Well, in the science fiction field some of the best fan sites are still created on free hosts. These have some great content that gets no exposure on either Google or Yahoo. That means you really are not getting all the best sites when you do a search. It does have an effect on the quality of the search results. You are not getting the whole picture and it highlights the need to always use multiple search engines when doing deep research.
Now I run a science fiction and fantasy directory, and perversely this gives my directory a reason to be, since I will help people find new sites, sites on free hosts and other obscure but good quality sites - so do not think I am going to complain very loudly. 
Tags: , ask, google, live, Search Engines, supplemental results, yahoo
