

Google Lies: The Myth of Good Content - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/06/google-lies-the.php

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mquander
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.

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profgubler
Only if it is initially promoted.

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

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DanielBMarkham
I do not believe this to be the case, hence the post.

Here's a test for you: open up a new blog account. Make a post that says "I
will give you 20 bucks if you email me"

Make sure the blog does not ping all of the search providers. Or go ahead and
ping them. It might be interesting to try each way.

And then just do -- nothing.

Obviously the page has immediate value and usefullness to anybody that could
use twenty bucks. But how many takers or readers do you think you'd get?

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benhoyt
Testing: <http://benhoyt.com/20bucks.php>

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benhoyt
Results: Okay, it's been about three days now, and it was hardly a conclusive
study, but yep, Daniel was right. It didn't market itself, and I only got 8
people emailing me (in the first day, none afterwards). So I get to keep my
$20. :-)

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foulmouthboy
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.

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dflock
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...](http://www.keyworddriven.com/filthy-linking-rich-and-
getting-richer.html) \- a good read and ironically long on content and from
2004.

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andrewljohnson
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.

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DanielBMarkham
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.

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Husafan
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.

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dschobel
_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?

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Alex3917
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.

