Google... Dumb as a Bottle of Chips!

[Dietriffic]

If you follow Diet-Blog.com, some of you may be aware that I was the Editor there for almost two years.

When Google decided to slap the content farms earlier this year, Diet-Blog was sadly hit, losing a MASSIVE chunk of traffic.

A very confusing experience, since it's a community blog with unique content.

I was reminded of it today when I was searching for the post where Jim (the owner) announced the issue on the site.

So I googled 'diet blog google' to find the Diet-Blog post in 9th.

But, what annoyed me was that at least two of the listings above were splogs.

This is Google's way of making the user experience better, apparently.

Like I say, Google sometimes act like their dumb as a bottle of chips in what they do.

[vikramd]

According to scroogle "diet blog" results in this as #1:

Diet Blog: Eat Right, Get Healthy
"Diet Blog combines the latest research and views on weight loss, fitness, and nutrition. Find reviews, discussion and experiences."
Diet Blog: Eat Right, Get Healthy

[hpad06]

apparently they are not, your website ranks #1 and #2

[Michael D Forbes]

why would you search for "diet blog google"?

That keyword bring sup this thread at #2, diet blog at #9

but "diet blog" is indeed #1 and 2

[Rus Sells]

I have not checked any keyword stats but do people search for ( diet blog ) at all?

[Dietriffic]

Maybe I wasn't clear...

I was just relaying the story. Diet Blog hasn't disappeared from the search results, but they were hit badly by Google like Ezine Articles and other sites.

The example I used was just to highlight that Google have slapped a site like Diet Blog, and yet scrapper sites are still ranking higher than the site the content originated on.

They talk about trying to clean up the search results and give the end user a better experience, but they are failing miserably, while some of the good guys suffer.

[matt5409]

Originally Posted by Dietriffic

Maybe I wasn't clear...

I was just relaying the story. Diet Blog hasn't disappeared from the search results, but they were hit badly by Google like Ezine Articles and other sites.

The example I used was just to highlight that Google have slapped a site like Diet Blog, and yet scrapper sites are still ranking higher than the site the content originated on.

They talk about trying to clean up the search results and give the end user a better experience, but they are failing miserably, while some of the good guys suffer.

Google are refining things all the time. As it happens I currently have some quite thin sites ranking at the top, above what I would regard authroity sites. I'm not sure this is technically "fair" but like I said, G refine their results OFTEN. Your site may very well return full-force (and then some) in the coming weeks.

[thebitbotdotcom]

Maybe you were scraped. You stated that your content was original, but has it been scraped since then.

Scraping is very easy to do, regardless of any and all protective measures some one puts in place.

From there, it's just a matter of backlinks.

Sad. I know.

[Dietriffic]

Originally Posted by Rus Sells

I have not checked any keyword stats but do people search for ( diet blog ) at all?

I think so.

Originally Posted by matt5409

Google are refining things all the time. As it happens I currently have some quite thin sites ranking at the top, above what I would regard authroity sites. I'm not sure this is technically "fair" but like I said, G refine their results OFTEN. Your site may very well return full-force (and then some) in the coming weeks.

That's fine if your content is original, and especially if it's better.

But taking away half a sites traffic and allowing splogs to rank higher is poor. Surely they've been at this game long enough to know the difference.

Anyway, this isn't MY site guys. It's a site I used to work on.

[matt5409]

Originally Posted by thebitbotdotcom

Maybe you were scraped. You stated that your content was original, but has it been scraped since then.

Scraping is very easy to do, regardless of any and all protective measures some one puts in place.

From there, it's just a matter of backlinks.

Sad. I know.

I'm very much in the camp that believes the original publisher gets ultimate credit. otherwise people would be ripping off content all over the place.

scraping is okay as long as due credit (and links!) are given.

P.s for the record i NEVER scrape content!

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by Micheal D Forbes

why would you search for "diet blog google"?

Because the people who swear google is dumb usually turn out to
be sooooooooooooooo much smarter, right?

Nobody in the real world would search for "diet blog google."

Unfortunately, many do not live in the real world.

I've said it many times. You people have waaaaaaaaaaay too much
time on your hands.

Paul

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Because the people who swear google is dumb usually turn out to
be sooooooooooooooo much smarter, right?

Nobody in the real world would search for "diet blog google."

Unfortunately, many do not live in the real world.

I've said it many times. You people have waaaaaaaaaaay too much
time on your hands.

Paul

She was searching specifically for the diet blog article about how Google killed their search rankings, so yes her search was accurate.

[dburk]

Hi Melanie,

There was a lot of confusion about what Google did and why they chose to "penalize" certain sites by the quality updates implemented earlier this year. We have learned a lot about those updates since and I will share what I have since learned.

The series of updates released by Google, dubbed the PANDA update, aimed to cut low quality content from the SERP. They never actually penalized any websites, they just ranked poor quality content lower in the SERP. This new series of updates marked the first time Google used an algorithm to test content quality against a standard.

Sites that had a lot of content that failed to meet the quality standards of this new algorithm may have felt that their "website" was targeted, but that isn't accurate. Google doesn't rank websites, they index and rank individual web documents. This new algorithm targeted specific pages which failed to meet certain quality standards.

If the editors of Diet-Blog.com were to go back and clean up the quality aspects of the content that fails to meet Google's new quality standards they would mitigate much of the damage to their rankings. Granted this would be a colossal task for a site the size Diet-Blog.com and they may decide it isn't worth it.

Sadly, many folks are still confused and haven't yet grasped what Google considers low quality content. It seems many folks confuse quality with usefulness or value, all import, but not the same things.

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Melanie,

There was a lot of confusion about what Google did and why they chose to "penalize" certain sites by the quality updates implemented earlier this year. We have learned a lot about those updates since and I will share what I have since learned.

The series of updates released by Google, dubbed the PANDA update, aimed to cut low quality content from the SERP. They never actually penalized any websites, they just ranked poor quality content lower in the SERP. This new series of updates marked the first time Google used an algorithm to test content quality against a standard.

Sites that had a lot of content that failed to meet the quality standards of this new algorithm may have felt that their "website" was targeted, but that isn't accurate. Google doesn't rank websites, they index and rank individual web documents. This new algorithm targeted specific pages which failed to meet certain quality standards.

If the editors of Diet-Blog.com were to go back and clean up the quality aspects of the content that fails to meet Google's new quality standards they would mitigate much of the damage to their rankings. Granted this would be a colossal task for a site the size Diet-Blog.com and they may decide it isn't worth it.

Sadly, many folks are still confused and haven't yet grasped what Google considers low quality content. It seems many folks confuse quality with usefulness or value, all import, but not the same things.

This is not true. Google has stated that even just a few pieces of low quality content can cause the entire domain to rank lower. This is straight from the horses mouth. Also Panda does hand out penalties, thats all it does actually. Panda is run manually, so the regular algorithm ranks the pages accordingly and then Panda rolls through and penalizes webpages that it feels are low quality. Then it judges how much low quality content the entire domain has, then decides whether or not to further penalize the entire domain across the board.

It is an awful system and Google made a big mistake with this one. Too many pages have been unfairly penalized and their searches have not improved by anyones standards. A much better idea would have been to reward high quality content rather then the approach of penalizing low quality content. Judging content is too subjective and penalizing is a really bad idea.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

She was searching specifically for the diet blog article about how Google killed their search rankings, so yes her search was accurate.

Not even close. You do searches to find where sites are from real world
searches. Not made up crapola. Anyone can tweak useless search results
doing useless searches.


Case in point:
This thread ranks #1 and #2 for dumb as a bottle of chips
So what?

In fact, this thread ranks #2 for bottle of chips
So what?

When you do stupid searches using stupid phrases, you expect
stupid results.

Stupid is as stupid does.

There is no way you would ever do a search for "diet blog google"
to find anything real about results. Period.

Bing is hoping to be as dumb a google someday...

If you really want to know how google handles some diet blog,
then you do real world searches using real world phrases.

Since diet-blog.com ranks #1 for diet blog, what the bottle of chips
is this thread about anyway?

Paul

[dburk]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

This is not true. Google has stated that even just a few pieces of low quality content can cause the entire domain to rank lower. This is straight from the horses mouth.

Can you please cite your source? I believe you may have misquoted what was actually said.

Google doesn't rank domains, they rank individual pages. If you have just a few pieces of low quality content it can effect the ranking of that page. If that page happens to bring a lot traffic to your other pages then, yes it has an impact on your overall traffic and this is consistent with my assertions.

Originally Posted by dp40oz

Also Panda does hand out penalties, thats all it does actually. Panda is run manually, so the regular algorithm ranks the pages accordingly and then Panda rolls through and penalizes webpages that it feels are low quality. Then it judges how much low quality content the entire domain has, then decides whether or not to further penalize the entire domain across the board.

Technically, it isn't a penalty it is a quality score that is used to weight relevancy scores. The pages remain in the index, it is just an additional factor in ranking. You could call it a penalty, but I think that is a rather loose use of that term.

Originally Posted by dp40oz

It is an awful system and Google made a big mistake with this one. Too many pages have been unfairly penalized and their searches have not improved by anyones standards. A much better idea would have been to reward high quality content rather then the approach of penalizing low quality content. Judging content is too subjective and penalizing is a really bad idea.

Really? You find it "awful" to apply standards to content quality? I have found the improved rankings for me and all of my clients a very satisfactory reward.

Anything that rewards quality content rankings could be considered a penalty toward sub-standard quality content. Conversely, anything that lowers the ranking of poor quality content rankings would tend to reward all content that meets the standard for quality. It is really a matter of perspective. You could choose to call them rewards and penalties, or just ranking factors, whatever your preference, but it just the way you choose to look at it.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Not even close. You do searches to find where sites are from real world
searches. Not made up crapola. Anyone can tweak useless search results
doing useless searches.


Case in point:
This thread ranks #1 and #2 for dumb as a bottle of chips
So what?

In fact, this thread ranks #2 for bottle of chips
So what?

When you do stupid searches using stupid phrases, you expect
stupid results.

Stupid is as stupid does.

There is no way you would ever do a search for "diet blog google"
to find anything real about results. Period.

Bing is hoping to be as dumb a google someday...

If you really want to know how google handles some diet blog,
then you do real world searches using real world phrases.

Since diet-blog.com ranks #1 for diet blog, what the bottle of chips
is this thread about anyway?

Paul

Hi Paul,

I'm sorry but I must disagree with your characterization here that using a string of seeming unrelated keywords as a "stupid" search. It is a common and effective search method that is recommended by Google:

Tips for searching - Web Search Help

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by dburk

Can you please cite your source? I believe you may have misquoted what was actually said.

Google doesn't rank domains, they rank individual pages. If you have just a few pieces of low quality content it can effect the ranking of that page. If that page happens to bring a lot traffic to your other pages then, yes it has an impact on your overall traffic and this is consistent with my assertions.



Technically, it isn't a penalty it is a quality score that is used to weight relevancy scores. The pages remain in the index, it is just an additional factor in ranking. You could call it a penalty, but I think that is a rather loose use of that term.



Really? You find it "awful" to apply standards to content quality? I have found the improved rankings for me and all of my clients a very satisfactory reward.

Anything that rewards quality content rankings could be considered a penalty toward sub-standard quality content. Conversely, anything that lowers the ranking of poor quality content rankings would tend to reward all content that meets the standard for quality. It is really a matter of perspective. You could choose to call them rewards and penalties, or just ranking factors, whatever your preference, but it just the way you choose to look at it.

Here ya go:

Amit Singhal also reiterated some Google advice for webmasters who complain of being hurt by the Panda update (though Amit points out that this could be any of a dozen algorithm tweaks made since Panda). Here again we see the focus that even if only part of your site has poor content — in this case typically meaning shallow (low word count) or duplicate content, it can hurt the rankings of your entire site, including other keywords:

“One other specific piece of guidance we’ve offered is that low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content.”

Im not sure why you don't see Panda as a penalty. It gives a quality score to pages but only uses that quality to negatively effect "low quality" pages. It doesn't boost high quality pages in the algorithm nor does it do anything for so so quality pages.

This is a bad idea! Why you ask? Because like I stated earlier the idea of judging "low quality content" is just too subjective. It is impossible to judge content despite what Google thinks. So since there is no real great way to judge content, rather then punishing websites that MIGHT have "low quality content" a better bet would be to boost sites that MIGHT have "high quality content". At least this way innocent webmasters wouldn't be thrown back into the abyss of Google because of a robot being wrong.

Also lets take a search term like "foot fungus in men over 40 in china" where you wouldn't find much specific information anywhere except maybe 1 page that Google defines as "low quality". Then the 1 website that has border line "low quality" content for whatever reason Google thinks (too may keywords, too many ads, too little specifics) but still offers the only exact match info out there won't be thrown to the abyss of Google because there is nothing else there to take its place.

What Panda has done for many terms is penalized webmasters for pages they deem "low quality", shot their webpages to the abyss of Google and replaced it with irrelevant search results because there is nothing to replace these pages because nobody else writes about "foot fungus in men over 40 in china". Although Google might not think this content is "high quality" its still more useful then nothing. If you boosted high quality content then if there is nothing there to replace these other websites they will still rank well.

[JamesGw]

dp40oz is actually correct here as far as I know. The Panda update imposes a penalty on domains.

This is why Hubpages are able to restore most of its traffic through the use of subdomains. After implementing the author subdomain feature, I saw my SE traffic rise from about 30% pre-Panda to about 120% pre-Panda.

Here's an example of hubpages traffic for one of my articles. It spikes back up after the implementation of subdomains (literally a day after.)



This one didn't recover 100%, but it's getting there.

[gtk29]

I do not know how you searched, but for me that site is coming ranked 1 for "diet blog". This means Google is smarter than a bottle of chips :P

[eugie17]

I think there is no way for G's algorithm to be smarter than humans, spammers will new ways to do it again and again, and the Panda update ended up rewarding them for it.

[BlakeM]

Originally Posted by Rus Sells

I have not checked any keyword stats but do people search for ( diet blog ) at all?

Yep. 2,900 exacts/month.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

Here ya go:

Amit Singhal also reiterated some Google advice for webmasters who complain of being hurt by the Panda update (though Amit points out that this could be any of a dozen algorithm tweaks made since Panda). Here again we see the focus that even if only part of your site has poor content — in this case typically meaning shallow (low word count) or duplicate content, it can hurt the rankings of your entire site, including other keywords:

Hi dp40oz,

Thanks for posting those snippets, it allow me to locate the actual sources you were citing.

In this case it is not Google speaking, it is blogger commenting on what was posted by Amit Singhal on the Google Webmaster Central Blog. I think it is important to note that this is the blogger's opinion and not attributable to Google.

Here's the source: Google on How to Rank Well in the Wake of Panda | Internet Marketing Blog

Originally Posted by dp40oz

“One other specific piece of guidance we’ve offered is that low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content.”

Source: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: More guidance on building high-quality sites

Now this is actually from Google's Webmaster Central Blog and supports "some" of your assertion to certain degree. However, it falls short of supporting your assertion that I was wrong.

Please note that he does not say "content on some [pages] of a website". He says "content on some parts of a website" (I made the word "parts" bold). While a "page" can be part of a website, the word part doesn't always mean "page". Knowing Google uses a team of linguists to pour over every piece of corporate communications, I am reasonably sure that he didn't mean to say the the word "page" either.

So the question is what did Amit mean by "content on some parts of a website"?

Perhaps I was wrong, but I took it to mean the content on the "parts" of a website that often appear on every page of a website (i.e. common headers, footers, sidebars, widgets, etc.). Perhaps sub-standard content quality effects the "Trust" value of a page which is passed to other pages that it links to. Either way, it does not make what I said wrong or any less valid.

You may also note that the advice given by Amit to those impacted by the Panda update is similar to the advice I offered earlier in this thread.

"removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content."

Again, note the use of the word "individual" in conjunction with "pages" while talking about corrective measures. This clearly implies that it is a page level factor, which is central to my original point, you know, the one that was "not true".

My guess is that Google implements content quality as a factor of Trust, which flows through a website in the same way that PageRank flows through a website. This also implies that a page that has backlinks from pages with low quality content will not benefit as much from those backlinks. This seems true based on the observed impact that the Panda update has had on web pages with backlinks from low quality content. If true, this supports my theory of page level content quality factors rather than a site level ranking factor.

The apparent reduced backlink power of links from low quality content suggests that pages that meet the quality standards pass a link juice value that is stronger than those that fail the standard. This implies a reward from high quality rather than a penalty for low quality. If this was a penalty then you might have the ability to permanently sabotage your competitors by linking to them from low quality content.

Originally Posted by dp40oz

Im not sure why you don't see Panda as a penalty. It gives a quality score to pages but only uses that quality to negatively effect "low quality" pages. It doesn't boost high quality pages in the algorithm nor does it do anything for so so quality pages.

While Panda clearly differentiates between content that meets a certain standard and content that does not. I see no reason to view it as a penalty. That is simply a matter of perspective, and true penalties would be tougher to implement, and subject to abuse, than a simple ranking factor.

Originally Posted by dp40oz

This is a bad idea! Why you ask? Because like I stated earlier the idea of judging "low quality content" is just too subjective. It is impossible to judge content despite what Google thinks. So since there is no real great way to judge content, rather then punishing websites that MIGHT have "low quality content" a better bet would be to boost sites that MIGHT have "high quality content". At least this way innocent webmasters wouldn't be thrown back into the abyss of Google because of a robot being wrong.

Also lets take a search term like "foot fungus in men over 40 in china" where you wouldn't find much specific information anywhere except maybe 1 page that Google defines as "low quality". Then the 1 website that has border line "low quality" content for whatever reason Google thinks (too may keywords, too many ads, too little specifics) but still offers the only exact match info out there won't be thrown to the abyss of Google because there is nothing else there to take its place.

What Panda has done for many terms is penalized webmasters for pages they deem "low quality", shot their webpages to the abyss of Google and replaced it with irrelevant search results because there is nothing to replace these pages because nobody else writes about "foot fungus in men over 40 in china". Although Google might not think this content is "high quality" its still more useful then nothing. If you boosted high quality content then if there is nothing there to replace these other websites they will still rank well.

I don't see a problem with establishing standards for content quality and while standards can be subjective when established, as long as they are reasonable and consistently applied, I don't see the problems that you seem to. In fact, I see it addressing a serious problem of removing the incentive of creating junk content for the purposes of web spam.

From what I have observed the Panda update doesn't generally remove complete websites from the index and many low quality pages still appear when there are no other relevant pages to be found. Perhaps the pages that you are finding removed from the index have issues beyond quality content.

[mmsearch]

So can anyone give a definition of what is considered quality content?

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by dburk

]I don't see a problem with establishing standards for content quality and while standards can be subjective when established, as long as they are reasonable and consistently applied, I don't see the problems that you seem to. In fact, I see it addressing a serious problem of removing the incentive of creating junk content for the purposes of web spam.

Well I think you'd feel differently when one of your sites gets unfairly penalized, and when it happens to you, you will see why we refer to it as a penalty. I had my highest earning website Pandalized with Panda 2.2 and completely thrown from ranking top 5 for hundreds of terms to not ranking in the top 600 for any. Then when Panda 2.3 comes along they obviously realized the error of their ways and BAM all my rankings are back. Its easy to see no problem when you've been one of the lucky ones. It frustrates me when people sit on their mighty perch saying how "everythings fair and fine" because they haven't been destroyed due to a robot error.

Panda has been a PR disaster since it came out. Google has recently admitted that its implementation in the beginning was severely flawed. Google is too big and powerful to show this sort of carelessness. They have ruined businesses because of Panda and then a month later say "oops our bad, we're tweaking it". This is irresponsible behavior from such a large company and it is part of the reason that they are knee deep in law suits right now.

Now I understand Google owes us nothing. They can do what they want but a company of this size and this power shouldnt be in the business of "slapping" websites around.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by mmsearch

So can anyone give a definition of what is considered quality content?

Hi mmsearch ,

Google has provided the following as hints to what they looked at when they wrote their Panda update:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

They are not going to reveal precisely how they implemented their quality algorithm because they don't want to make it easy to game the system. I think if you figure out which of these can be easily applied to current software technology then you will be looking at the most obvious components of the new algorithm.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

Panda has been a PR disaster since it came out.

Google had record profits last quarter.

A disaster? For who?

Not me.

For each person who panda was a "disaster" for, there is a corresponding
person for whom panda was terrific.

Wake up and smell the reality people.

These threads are tiresome. Same old whiners who just can't fathom
why google does not owe them anything.

Google does not owe you a $%^#@ thing. They don't care about a
little ol' webmaster. Get over yourselves. Google does not have to
love to love you just because you think you're great.

And they don't have to hate your competition just because you
say so.

Paul

[lovboa]

If they're tiresome,you always have the option to not post a reply

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Google had record profits last quarter.

A disaster? For who?

Not me.

For each person who panda was a "disaster" for, there is a corresponding
person for whom panda was terrific.

Wake up and smell the reality people.

These threads are tiresome. Same old whiners who just can't fathom
why google does not owe them anything.

Google does not owe you a $%^#@ thing. They don't care about a
little ol' webmaster. Get over yourselves. Google does not have to
love to love you just because you think you're great.

And they don't have to hate your competition just because you
say so.

Paul

It says "PR" disaster Paul. Which it was and they've admitted. Not a disaster to me. If another person wants me to find my source again I will, but please take me word for it so I don't have to go searching around for the exact quote. GOOGLE has said that the initial implementation of Panda was severely flawed and in turn was a very bad PR hit.

Just because blindly following the almighty Google is what you choose to do doesn't mean the rest of us have to sit around and say nothing. Panda has not improved the SERP's, its been implemented poorly and Google would have had a monumental earnings quarter despite of its existence.

I make a full time living off of this awful yet wonderful thing we call Google so when I want to voice my displeasure its all just wanting to talk shop which sometimes can lead to heated discussions. If you are sick of these threads then by all means STOP POSTING ON THEM!

[Michael D Forbes]

Just to clarify... I was not trying to stir anything up.

My point was that "diet blog google" brings up zero searches in Googles Keyword tool. It isn't a term their blog is targeting, I'm nearly 100% sure of that. If the OP was searching for a specific article with that keyword, she found it, excellent, Google did it's job. I just wondered why that particular term was relevant to her ex-blogs rankings. It doesn't appear to be at all.

Now, "diet blog" surely is, and does rank #1 and #2, which seems to make the entire point she was making very empty.

I admit freely, I can't read minds, and I may have totally misunderstood her intention in posting.

Hope I cleared up my point rather than make it murkier.

[ahefner33]

Can someone tell me how a bot/algorithm can differentiate between good quality content and poor(other than duplicate)? Its already subjective for humans (one can think something is good and the other thinks completely different) so how can you program something to know?

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by ahefner33

Can someone tell me how a bot/algorithm can differentiate between good quality content and poor(other than duplicate)? Its already subjective for humans (one can think something is good and the other thinks completely different) so how can you program something to know?

Amen! It can't. You and I will have different opinions on what high quality is. Thats why punishing sites for robot perceived "low quality" is just a bad decision. It reminds me of those cars that parallel park themselves... are you REALLY gonna trust a robot to make that kind of call.

If they feel they HAVE TO judge quality then by all means give bonus points for perceived "exceptional" quality. True computer programers laugh when Google makes statements that their bot can rifle through billions of webpages a second and accurately judge quality.

[LiamP]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

Amen! It can't. You and I will have different opinions on what high quality is. Thats why punishing sites for robot perceived "low quality" is just a bad decision. It reminds me of those cars that parallel park themselves... are you REALLY gonna trust a robot to make that kind of call.

If they feel they HAVE TO judge quality then by all means give bonus points for perceived "exceptional" quality. True computer programers laugh when Google makes statements that their bot can rifle through billions of webpages a second and accurately judge quality.

I'm a programmer but I musn't be a true one because I can see how Google algorithm can accurately judge quality. Perfectly accurate? No. But accurate enough to get it right a hell of a lot of the time and enough to continually improve their results.

As we all seem to agree, quality is subjective - just ask Robert Pirsig . So how to judge whether a search result is the best one for a term? By data which indicates whether or not a user is satisfied with their search or not.

My guess is Google scores each search according to how successful it was via their metrics. They then aggregate those scores. Kinda like a customer satisfaction index.
When an algorithm change or Panda update is done they check those scores to see if their customers are more, or less, satisfied. Thus if a Panda update leaves 100 million customers more satisfied, but 99 million less, Google can see that as a win as there is a net gain of 1 million. (remember a customer is a searcher and not a webmaster). The problem being that the 99 million less then come onto the forums and the 100 million more stay largely quiet
So Google iterate again. And keep going to improve. Sometimes making things worse but usually making things better.

Anyway, as to the question of how to accurately give a webpage a quality score. It all comes back to the customer satisfaction data. From this data, they can infer what a quality page looks like - most of the time. They can infer what a poor quality page looks like - most of the time.
So from this they can give quality scores to pages and use this data to adjust and improve their results.

Inevitably, there is collateral damage. Google are sifting billions of websites and millions will get misplaced. Perfectly good websites are shunted unfairly. As a website owner and somebody whose has a couple of sites that have gone down post-Panda I sympathize.

But if Google increase their overall customer satisfaction (remembering that unhappy people are noisy and happy ones are quiet), then they have accurately - but not perfectly - gauged quality. They have hit the target and got a little bit closer to the bullseye.

You may sometimes feel that Google have got it spectacularly wrong because you are hurt and people on the forums are complaining and people on SEO websites are writing articles - but ultimately your sample size is tiny and subjective. Whereas Google has the complete sample.

And also yes, I'd let a robot park my car - looking forward to it as I'm rubbish at parallel parking

[dburk]

Originally Posted by ahefner33

Can someone tell me how a bot/algorithm can differentiate between good quality content and poor(other than duplicate)? Its already subjective for humans (one can think something is good and the other thinks completely different) so how can you program something to know?

Hi ahefner33,

I just don't get why you and other folks have such a difficult time understanding that setting a standard for quality, and testing for compliance with that standard, is something a computer can do very well. Obviously, Google had to decide where the standards would be drawn, and as I understood they used feedback from a large focus group study.

Haven't you ever had a paper graded by a teacher when you were in school? Computers have served as word processors for many years. The algorithms for spell-check, grammar check, and voice check have been around a long time. Why would you think that Google couldn't use that technology to test your content quality?

[owenlee]

seriously...just do your part as we cant really control how google thinks and does..

if you want long term business then providing unique content is a must...and there are many ways to reach out to your audience without google...no point getting upset over it..life still goes on right?haha...business must adopt to changes...

[Black Hat Cat]

Originally Posted by dburk

Haven't you ever had a paper graded by a teacher when you were in school? Computers have served as word processors for many years. The algorithms for spell-check, grammar check, and voice check have been around a long time.

And they still get it wrong. A lot. So much so that they often have to be corrected by REAL humans.

Why would you think that Google couldn't use that technology to test your content quality?

Maybe they could. But proper grammar and correct spelling doesn't mean something is quality content, or even accurate content, nor does incorrect spelling and incorrect grammar necessarily mean a piece of content isn't quality. I know I wrote a paper or two during college, and the grammar was nearly perfect, but I still got a crappy grade because the content..well, sucked.

There is no way Google can currently tell if your content is quality or not, and I think it's pretty obvious from the search engine results that they don't particularly care about spelling and grammar either.

[ahefner33]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi ahefner33,

I just don't get why you and other folks have such a difficult time understanding that setting a standard for quality, and testing for compliance with that standard, is something a computer can do very well. Obviously, Google had to decide where the standards would be drawn, and as I understood they used feedback from a large focus group study.............

Hi Dburk,

I guess I also don't get why me and other folks have a difficult time understanding how something programmed can understand quality per se Google's tips on good web content.

I hire out a lot of my content writing. I also have set instructions(like Google) for jobs I post to have writers to do. Now I can receive work from writer A and writer B and writer C, all following the same instructions, and think to myself that writer C has the better quality (in my mind), maybe because it is more researched, uses more sophisticated terms, sounds more experienced in the topic, and also is 400 words shorter than writer A and Writer B. But that doesn't mean that writer A and writer B have terrible quality. They both write with good grammar, complete sentences, no misspellings and in their minds probably think its the best set of work they've ever done. But to me, I don't think that Writer A and B have really researched the topic well and the information just isn't that informational or useful. I just don't see how you can program something to know the difference.

You can still have a teacher assign something and get a grade of a C but you thought it was a A.