I judge quality content as human readable and human shareable (herpes pun intended). If users with a genuine interest in the subject are not willing to share it then its most likely not quality content.

Thank you sir for making my night

Of course robot will never read content exactly as human, but as you know Google use 200 signals to determine where they will rank site, in order to survive all those algorithm changes that Google overtime making harder and harder for as to do well in the serps strong social signal's is Now more important then ever...

Ok...

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I stay away from this subject because its subjective and I've admit many times that my content is not the best based on whether or not I personally would stay on site.

Quality content is only a part of SEO. If you make good content people will share it and give you backlinks. The issue is that you still need to get people on the website in the first place and you need to be a damn good content maker to get people to share. Quality content is merely a piece of the puzzle.

I think Dennis raises an excellent point and for one look forward to some further responses in the same way Dan Curtis has posted. I always considered this to be a factor, the amount of clicks you get from the serps.

If you notice the serps don't link directly to your site it seems to go through some kind of tracking system first.

Dwell time. Does the user stay on the page to read the whole thing or do they go back to the serps and look further down. That's why bounce rate only tells you half of the story...people can bounce from your site because what you have on your site already answered your question. But do they go back and look further down the serps?

Well actually, yes, it can. The readable part is handled by the same kind of algorithm that's been part of most word processors for the last ten years. The shareable part has always been a part of their algorith. It's called backlinks.

As mentioned by Radivoj, there are 200 factors (more or less, only Google knows exactly how many and what those factors are) that help determine ranking of a page. They are likely each categorized and one of those categories called quality. It may be one of four or five major categories and each has a different weight. The Quality category may have for example a weight of 25% of the total. It may contain 40 factors, each with their own weight within that category.

I think you got the first part right. I just don't believe they measure time on site.


Good. Then, if you were building a search engine, how would you do it? What factors and what weights would you give each? I've actually done this exercise and I've tried to get the community here to give their input but nobody seems interested.

I've said it before. The definition of quality that Google uses is not what most people think it means. Dan seems to have the idea, at least part of it. If a page gets ranked highly for "how to cure herpes" and it recommends dipping your weenie into Pepsi or baking soda, it means it did many things right to rank highly. It doesn't mean that it is correct. You and I are intelligent and know that can't be true. So you say it's not quality content. Fair enough but that's not Google's definition. The algorithm is not as intelligent and doesn't know that's not true. It doesn't even have a penis so how would it know. Someone just pushed the right buttons as you said. Unfortunately, this may get some people in trouble and trying this so-called cure. But really, do you really see this sort of thing in the results? No because Google has checks and balances against that sort of thing. Somewhere in their database is "herpes cure with Pepsi = bad".

The main indicator of quality to Google is the same as it has been for a decade: BACKLINKS, not how many words, not grammar/spelling/punctuation, not keyword density, not LSI keywords, not bounce rate, or whatever else some idiot on this forum told you. An article could be written poorly and contain bad information but if a lot of authority sites are linking to it, Google will view that as quality content and rank it higher. Backlinks are the most important ranking factor and they always have been and always will because quality is SUBJECTIVE, which means Google can't determine what's quality content for its users. USERS determine what's quality content for users (through backlinks).

I don't know about that
If that dog can, yours can too

Dog peeing in toilet - YouTube

Thread is over.

Now sticky it so people stop overusing that stupid word over and over as the end all be all answer to everything.

Ding ding ding! True True True!

Mainly backlinks, because that is how Google judges content, technically. Its almost a popularity system.

In reality, they can tell what content is stolen/spun, you aren't fooling anyone with shit content.

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Actually, it can.
There are many linguistic indicators available that an algorithm can use to judge the quality of an article. It doesn't take rocket science to see many of them. Other more advanced techniques for the discovery of more indicators have probably been developed with the help of language experts.

dessin
Thank you very much. This whole thread was inspiration for me, I think I'm going to write it down and publish something of the sort in my blog. Now that will attract quite a lot of traffic if you ask me.

I've got a lot of experience with what is and isn't quality content. It turns out that you need 250 bare bone words of grammatically correct sentence structure, with 3-4 instances of your keyword. That will get you a 90/100 on the test. Anything else is just extra credit.

Good content is at least 80% unique on the The Best Spinner... am I doing it right?

The only way Google can improve is to have human reviewers, (which they do)

All in all there into for them selfs and dont care about us? They are just getting stupid now!!

The reason I argue for quality content on sites is that:
1.) it builds trust in visitors so it's easier to sell them things.
2.) it means you'll pass a manual review by google
3.) sure, google can't tell really good quality content from good quality but in my opinion can definitely tell grammatically poor content with poor sentence structure. Even your trusty little microsoft word can tell so why wouldn't the big G?

Ian

OP - If you wrote as creatively as you did here on your own blog, then you'd probably be doing okay.

The real answer lies in the syndication of content. Content creation, publication and syndication. Add in tracking and measuring, and you've got a winner. And of course offer multiple formats of your content (audio, video etc)

You should be writing content to attract real leads - not writing to satisfy algorithms!

I could repeat myself a hundred times over, but it wont make any difference. No one seems to listen. I'll log in tomorrow and see another 500 threads with members posting out of sheer desperation asking how to "beat" the latest update.

Its a lost cause.

The only real winners here are :

1. Google.
2. Google's share holders
3. Searchers
4. Smart internet marketers who dont rely soley on Google
5. Nincompoops pushing crappy WSO's promising false "solutions" within the forum for $7 a copy.

Thank god somebody brought this up. That word gets thrown around so much on here that its starting to aggravate the crap out of me when someone brings it up. I have 2 authority sites and 7 autoblogs and none of them have any manually created backlinks so ive been relying on content alone to rank and receive traffic. Ironically when panda hit, my two authority sites with "quality" content written by myself took massive hits. But 5 of my autoblogs, with nothing but spun and spammy content continued to rank for many keywords. :confused:

I did a little digging on the issue of what Google considers quality content and came across this article: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: More guidance on building high-quality sites

Here's a few points that I call BS on:

Does the article describe both sides of a story?
Would you trust the information presented in this article? (kinda like what you mentioned with the herpes thing)
Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?

I mean really...

Relevance, that's what matters.

Hey! if u say so..... then you must be right.

So I wonder how many authority sites u rank for?
because hey! if google can't judge quality, you must be ranking pretty high...
is just an algorithm right?
run my 2 guys in a garage, right?
is a little php script.... right?

I don't think backlinks are the most important indicator but are a major one.


Exactly.

True. But Google's use and definition of quality is not only about the writing. For example, in Adwords, a bridge page is considered poor quality. Nothing to do with the words or what they say.

We could use the word quality for other things and have different ideas of what it meant. I could say a woman has the qualities I like and therefore desirable, to me. Another man may think I mean she's beautiful. But when seeing her, might think why I think she's quality as she may not be anywhere near a 10 in his book. But my definition of a quality woman means an intelligent and independent woman. Nothing to do with physical beauty (although that doesn't hurt).

As dBurk said, the only definition that matters in this context is Google's.


Probably the wrong forum for this sort of thing. Like I said earlier, I've tried. Also, people have pre-conceived notions about what Google thinks is quality. But you seem to be logical, intelligent and said you prefer a scientific approach. So let's discuss it privately. I'd invite dBurk and Yukon as well if they are interested. I think we'd just replicate what can be seen on rob1123's link (thanks Rob).

Quality content is irrelevant and subjective of course, as you say - it's CONVERTING content that matters.

Google does also employ a lot of Human Reviewers now (supposedly) and they DO have strict 'quality' guidelines (the training PDF is available online).

They can't read content, but they do have several checks that the bot can go through to determine whether the content in question is quality.

And also as stated, from time to time there are Human Reviewers.

So you think Google isn't taking bounce rate into consideration?

If you have useful content and people enjoy reading it, would they stick around longer (and check out other pages) if they actually like it?

What if the content on the website reads: "revenue meaning good great info for to this that are great. To ensure ratings good are great 1 to must be 2 for it are good two".

Google can see the bounce rate and the time on site. If everyone clicks out quicker than they clicked in, then that can trigger a red flag to google. Also, what legit website with a brand would actually link to spun articles?

Quality does matter.

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gotta love that starting post, though,
there is an element of human review which google is implementing. So a page of absolute boll'uks which doesnt make any logical grammer sence wouldnt convince them, but a page with content which is readable, doesnt mean it has to be scientifically accurate

Complex, you don't seem to get it. Don't let the use by Google of the word quality fool you. It has nothing to do with the dictionary definition.

If I decide that the quality of a page is determined by the fact that it has a certain font and size with a polka dot background, then, by MY definition, any page that doesn't have those attributes is of poor quality. This is my standard and can be measured. Just like every other factor Google actually considers can be measured, including writing. Because if it couldn't be measured, what's the point? It would just be subjective and software is not good at that.

The thing is, you think of content as just the words. Quality in Google's eyes is much more than that.

LMAOOO this got me rolling.....I understand you bro!

Of course google is taking bounce rate into consideration lol Its THEIR search engine. Im sure theres tons of stuff we don't think about that the algo looks for.

They COULD take bounce rate into consideration, IF they had the data. But apart from those sites that install Analytics, how would they know? Does it make sense to use bounce rate? What would Google do if they don't have that information and considers it important?

Maybe those of us who say that they don't consider bounce rate are wrong. I'm fine with being wrong but I need evidence. You are right about one thing. It's their search engine and can use whatever metric they want (provided it's a quantifiable metric available for every page) and there are lots of other metrics being used few of us even think about.

If you notice the serps don't link directly to your site it seems to go through some kind of tracking system first.

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Google is not some English teacher grading your essay on whether it is of quality or just pure batsh*t.

They most likely judge it from hundreds of signals/factors (shares, likes?, bounce rates, ratio of time on site to number of words, elevation of the sun, moon cycles and blood alcohol content.)