Google Quality Ranking Factors (May 2011)

Google have released a list of the quality factors that they take into account when they are determining a high quality site. These questions sound quite subjective, but Google engineers have found ways of interpreting these in a measurable way. I have been trying to interpret some of these in the same sorts of ways, so here are some of my thoughts on what factors Google might be using to turn these queries into search results.

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
  • Indications of trust for the page – backlinks, social media mentions, for the individual page and the site as a whole
  • General appearance of the site – broken images, broken links
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
  • Duplicate content from other pages on the web
  • Article length
  • Reading level
  • Semantic analysis
  • Subheadings
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
  • Duplication of content / sentences within site
  • Check for Print versions and Email to Friend versions
  • If you have similar pages condense them into a longer version
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
  • Presence of credit card company logos, “secured by” logos
  • Presence of Privacy Policy / Terms and Conditions pages
  • Presence of clear contact pages
  • Presence of address/telephone number on site
  • Broken images
  • Reviews for the site on other sites
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
  • Spelling and grammar just got a whole lot more important!
  • Dodgy use of HTML coding may hit you here if it breaks up the natural flow of the text
  • Correct use of bulleted lists
  • Check your facts are correct
• 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?
  • Potential here for looking for awkward grammar usage in keyword phrases – e.g. omission of linking words which people do when they search and not when they write or backwards usage e.g. <searchterm> <place> usage which is more commonly searched than used in real life
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
  • Is it unique on the internet
  • Is it the first place that Google saw the information? If your news/content/blog pages don’t ping Google then they should!
  • Does it have tables, images, references (links out)
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
  • How does this page score compared to others about the same subject – poor pages will still appear if there is no other content on the subject
  • Bounce rate from SERP (Link)
• How much quality control is done on content?
  • Back to the spelling and grammar issues
  • Broken images
  • Broken links from article
  • Outbound links to poor quality sites
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
  • Detection of specific words
  • Semantic analysis
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
  • Backlinks from related sites
  • Topic is well represented on the site as a whole
  • How long has the domain been active
• 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?
  • Duplication across multiple sites
  • Spelling and grammar
  • Broken links
  • Broken images
  • Multiple sites on same IP address / group of addresses
  • Indications that content is cut and pasted such as the coding that gets imported from Word, meaningless HTML insertions or use of multiple <br> tags instead of <p>
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
  • It’s that spelling and grammar thing again
  • Are there coding issues within the content e.g. unclosed HTML tags or tags that are opened and closed with nothing (or just a space) in them, or the crud that sometimes comes from pasting from Word.
  • Bulleted lists and subheadings are good as they show structure
  • Good and unique title tags and meta descriptions
  • Broken outbound links
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
  • Comparison with information from trusted sources
  • Semantic analysis
  • Reading level
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
  • Brand mentions
  • Backlinks to domain
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
  • Comparison to trusted sources
  • Article length
  • Semantic analysis
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
  • Images (e.g graphs, illustrations) embedded within content
  • Tables of information within content
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
  • Broken links
  • Citations/Shares/Likes on the web
  • Broken images
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
  • Ad placement
  • Number of ad blocks
  • Screen real estate held by ads compared to article
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
  • Very subjective, but related to length, imagery, citations
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
  • Article length longer = better
  • Links to resources, images, tables and bulleted lists within content are good
  • Amount of article content > amount of other information around it (boilerplate text)
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
  • Spelling and grammar!
  • HTML coding – accuracy. I doubt they are looking for W3C compliance levels of good code, but sloppy HTML could hurt you here
  • Broken links
  • Non duplicate title tags and meta descriptions
  • Use of multiple <br> tags instead of p tags
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
  • Ad usage
  • Small content compared to rest of page/boilerplate
  • Too small text size
  • Text hard to read (colours not contrasting enough)
  • Slow loading times

I’ve concentrated on trying to point to things you can fix (like coding and spelling) and I’m assuming that your site isn’t just a content farm, or even fixing all these probably won’t help. There’s quite a lot of SEO information out there post-Panda (and subsequent updates as Google point out) because there isn’t a simple fix and Google’s guidance is obscure because of trying to protect themselves from spammers. In some ways the fact they are trying to help with posts such as this one is more frustrating for those who have been affected because it doesn’t really give answers. If you want a different view on some of these questions including some more resources for specific questions you could check out this blog which I read after writing mine and am fairly astonished how different they are, although we’ve obviously approached it from different angles.