Google Lies: The Myth of Good Content

http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/06/google-lies-the.php

by DanielBMarkham • 17 years ago

40 20 17 years ago

You're wrong. SEO will get you the visits, but Google monitors time on your site, clicks to related search results, bounces, and returns to the search results page. They use crafty machine-learning.

If you get a bunch of in-links, but your content doesn't perform (or worse performs in a spammy way), you're visits are going to tank. As I understand it, PageRank nowadays basically controls in what order Google will crawl your pages, and has some effect on your SERPs. But the algorithms are far from dependent on PageRank/popularity.

Content matters.

DanielBMarkham3• 17 years ago

You misunderstood. I am NOT saying that content does not matter. I am NOT saying to game the system just for hits. Geesh. I love writing, and I write the best content I can.

I am saying that marketing is and has always been 90% and content 10%. That's true for blogging, for programming, for anything where you're trying to have an impact on people.

And it's not you, but I'm really tired of all the hand-waving and magic Google talk. I'm sure they have special powers that lets them see at night too, but they don't have the power to change reality. If you measure something and reward people based on it, people will game the system to increase the measure. No matter how complicated your magic system is.

Husafan• 17 years ago

This is a fairly silly gripe. There is no objective measure for "best," content. Google has done a great job of finding relevant results for a given topic, and as the previous poster pointed out, they are constantly making adjustments to prevent "gaming," of the system as you describe it.

Beyond that, marketing is nothing more than swaying people's opinions. If you engage in marketing, and convince people you have the best content, and Google picks up on that and increases the page rank accordingly, I'd say they are doing exactly what they advertise.

billybob• 17 years ago

Marketing may be important, but content is way more than 10%. How many sites have you ever visited? How many do you return to frequently, and tell others about?

Now, what makes the difference, marketing, or your experience at that site?

This guy has famously boasted that his page was ranked higher than those of companies with billion-dollar advertising budgets, without him ever promoting it. Why? Because it was funny. And that's all it took. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maddox_(writer)

encoderer• 17 years ago

Experts Exchange is a favorite whipping boy here lately (and with great reason). I bring it up because if Google put as much weight on the UX measurements as you claim, SERPs would be bereft of Experts Exchange links. Most of us here know you can see the answers by scrolling to the bottom, but even a lot of professional devs I know hit the back button when they see the "join now" links, let alone the novices and hobbyists.

A few friends of mine in the eCommerce business hit top 3 rankings on semi-competitive keyphrases by doing nothing to their sites but building rich internal link structures.

One of them sold ipod covers, for example. Product descriptions, marketing text, etc, all read "[iPod covers], also called [iPod Jackets] are [covers for the iPod]" etc etc etc. And each of those phrases link back to the Index.

After they did this-- creating thousands of links leading back to the index-- they went from google obscurity to top of the rankings. And they've held that spot for a long time.

And this massive amount of text with every 3rd word a link back to the index is not good content. It's horrible, actually. And there's a LOT of it.

And that's not blackhat. That's 100% legit SEO!

foulmouthboy• 17 years ago

I don't think Google's lying when it says that content is the "best" way to get people. Sure, a combination of terrific marketing and some gray to black hat SEO techniques will get plenty of visits quickly, but the solid content will be what keeps visitors coming back and referring a site to others. In that respect, good content isn't the "fastest" way to get people, but I'd suggest that it's still the "best".

Take the pop music example a step further. The most popular singers at any given moment will consist of those that are the most hyped and marketed, but that group will also have genuinely talented individuals who have maintained popularity because they are able to live up to the hype.

All that said, I agree that marketing and promotion is just as important as building a great product. That's basically the same thing as being able to communicate why something's great instead of hoping that people will just figure it out for themselves.

mquander4• 17 years ago

I think there's a misunderstanding. When Google says "good content," what they mean is "content that is useful to people," not "content with a high level of artistic or technical quality." Useful in this context might mean "entertaining," "intriguing," "instructive," or "answers my question" depending on the type of content.

Content that is useful gets visited, linked, revisited, and relinked to more people; that content climbs the ranks of Google.

profgubler• 17 years ago

Only if it is initially promoted.

mquander4• 17 years ago

Generally that's true, but the more useful your content is, the less promotion it'll (probably) need.

webwright• 17 years ago

Nope. 95% of it is "be worth linking to". You can brute force that thru social pressure and/or effort. But if you are worth talking about and linking to, you should be able to tell 100 people with talk/write online by brute force, and sit back and wait as word spreads.

Practically speaking, everything can't be THAT worth talking about, so promotion is important. But people spend way too little time honing their story and way too much time trying to get it out there.

dschobel• 17 years ago

The web is not about good content. It's a popularity game. Popularity games are played by knowing the right people, doing each other favors, getting out and meeting people, and by being, well, popular.

This is supposed to be some grand epiphany about the web? How about the fact that this is how people have chosen what to consume and whom to deal with for the all of modern history?

dflock• 17 years ago

I think maybe there needs to be a distinction between initial traffic - where you might need to shout above the din to get noticed - and long tail traffic, which is almost the opposite.

Also, see Filthy Linking Rich: http://www.keyworddriven.com/filthy-linking-rich-and-getting... - a good read and ironically long on content and from 2004.

Alex3917• 17 years ago

I agree, but with a few caveats. Promoting your writing means much more than just telling your friends about it. Often it means putting on a show within the blog post itself. If you write your posts in such a way that makes them look like you worked really hard on them then you'll get a lot more hits than if you just write down really brilliant ideas matter-of-factly. Showmanship applies to more than just juggling and professional wrestling, people are much more apt to like your writing if you make it look like you're thinking at the edge of your intellectual abilities. There are a bunch of other interesting things like this too. I think you are generally correct in your understanding though.

Google Lies: The Myth of Good Content

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