Analysing The Quality of Google SERPs
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Everyday you’ll hear tons of definitive statements made concerning the “quality” of the current SERPs. The statements are made so often that you get the impression that people are talking about todays soup: “It seems extra salty today”, etc. Mostly, people feel that the current brew of SERPs is either high quality or low quality, depending on where their listings reside at that exact moment.
It’s human nature. If you’re doing well in the SERPs, you tend to think that Google has finally gotten it just right. There’s no way around this. When you work hard and you get “rewarded” by good traffic, you tend to think this reward came your way because of your website’s inherent quality. In reality, quality might have nothing to do with your current rankings, or anyone else’s for that matter. Quality is completely subjective, and the overally “quality” of the current Google stew has nothing to do with whether your site ranks at the top, or not.
When a group of webmasters start analysing the SERPs together, the message gets even more jumbled. Even if you get 100 replies from various people that seem to indicate a trend is certainly happening, it could just be co-incidence. 100 webmasters out of billions is never a true indicator of what’s really happening.
I stay away from trying to determing the quality of Google’s SERPs, but some days it certainly does look much worse than other days, at least on random searches I enter.
What does quality mean in the context of website content?
Hell if I know. If Google was being honest, they’d admit they don’t know either. All they can do is guess based on what they consider to be the primary criteria (incoming links usually), but when they guess, they’re often wrong. So if everyone is always telling you to increase the quality of your website or website content, what exactly does the advice mean?
What is your definition of a quality website?
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2 Responses to “Analysing The Quality of Google SERPs”
Great points. Have any suggestions for updating their algorithims or improving that quality? The truth is results are both subjective AND objective and that is why personal search, like the kind being pioneered by Google will revolutionize search and create a better environment for everyone.
I think in their current states, Google gets it most right… sort of. As has been highlighted many times their bloody sandbox makes their content kind of stale, but it sure isn’t spam filled or inaccurate. Where as Yahoo and MSN are often more up to date and up to the minute, their content is not as good filled sometimes with spam and crap.
So what is good? Good is not spam and it is a site relevant to me, personally. In my opinion I love blogs, I love web sites where the authors are clearly dedicated, no matter what their field or profession. I like a site that is easy to read, easy to navigate, attractive in design (another major subjective area) and perhaps most of all has what I’m looking for and related things. Now it’s Google’s job to match up what I type with these sites, they estimate what I’m looking for and estimate that the site they have in their index matches that. So far they’ve been doing a MUCH better job.
As a web designer, a good site must also include standards based encoding and a CSS based design!
So those are the things I find important… what do you find important Darren?
By Zach Katkin Fort Myers Web Design on Mar 26, 2007
Zach, I don’t see how you can go wrong with standards. I’ve always used PHP/MySQL and a CSS based design. I can’t imagine doing it the “hard way”.
Thanks for your comments.
By Darren McLaughlin on Apr 5, 2007