Many people have an incredibly low bar for what they consider “great” content that deserves to rank in Google Search.
I often see people lamenting the fact that their content is great and high quality. They just can’t understand why it’s not ranking. But inevitably, when I go to look at that great content, it’s usually subpar at best.
The problem is that everyone who creates inferior content (and website experiences) is blind to this reality. Everyone thinks your content is great and high quality.
But it isn’t. It just isn’t. They just can’t admit their content is ugly.
Truly great content is rare.
It’s not about whether it was generated by AI or human. AI tools can write crap. But humans have been mastering the art and science of creating mediocre content for much longer.
The web is full of generic content. Just because you think it’s high-quality content doesn’t mean people, or Google, do.
Google, closing and brands
The web is a black hole. So said former Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 2008.
And Google, despite its best efforts, all these years later, still hasn’t figured it out.
Google’s solution was brands. That’s why you’re seeing so many complaints lately (none of which are really new, although they may be new to you) about:
Who is to blame for Google search quality?
There’s an endless circular argument here: it’s almost a case of which came first, the chicken or the egg.
Content came first. Then Google. But now Google is a search monopoly that can send a lot of incredibly valuable search traffic, or almost none at all. SEO can be very feast or famine.
Google, for its part, is absolutely to blame. (If you haven’t read AJ Kohn’s brilliant piece, Enough Goog! I highly suggest reading it for a full teardown of some of the big problems with the Google search experience.)
So people basically copy or mimic the kind of mediocre content that Google ranks for a given query in hopes of beating whatever the ranking is, which is often not that great anyway.
Multiply that by large and you have piles of garbage content that Google now has to understand and rank.
So Google does Google and goes back to what it knows: when in doubt, rank a brand’s content.
But what about content creators? They are also partly to blame.
In 2022, before ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence were available to everyone to flood the web with even more low-quality content and spam, we published Is Google Search Getting Worse? Former Googler Marissa Mayer said she thought the “quality of the Internet has taken a hit”:
“When you see the quality of your search results go down, it’s natural to blame Google and say, ‘Why are they worse?’ To me, the most interesting and sophisticated thinking is if you say, ‘Wait, but Google just it’s a window on the web.” The real question is, why does it make the web worse?’”
And by the way, Google’s search quality crises aren’t new. Absolutely not.
I won’t repeat everything, as former Search Engine Land editor Danny Sullivan (now Google Search Liaison) did a great job in his 2017 article, A Deep Look at Google’s Biggest Search Quality Crisis.
In addition to discussing the barrage of fake news and questionable content at the time, he delves into the long history of Google’s other challenges of when Google search results became the “worst ever,” including the rise of low-quality content farms that ranked well in search results that led to the Google Panda algorithm update nearly 13 years ago.
Let’s be real: Google and content creators are to blame here.
Meanwhile, search engines lose.
How should Google rank mediocre content?
HouseFresh posted an excellent rant against Google two days ago, How Google is killing independent sites like ours. Today, I decided to look at some of the “high-quality content” that HouseFresh publishes, not to dismantle any SEO issues, just as a content consumer and product finder.
My first article, chosen at random, was entitled The 5 best air purifiers for cigarette smoke we’ve tested. This is how the review begins:
Is it high quality content? Is this helpful? When it’s real review will it start
That opening line is generically and painfully written. Talking about “a person who smokes while walking by” is how you start your product review? Is this your hook? Really?
Why do I have to read a bad book report before I get to what I really came for: a review? This is the same kind of approach to bland content that caused so many people to despise recipe blogs.
But it turns out that this habit of generic writing isn’t unique to HouseFresh at all. Curious, I looked to see what content ranks in Google Search [best air purifiers for cigarette smoke]? This is what I see:
Good cleaning in position 1:
Compared to what else ranks in the top 10 organic positions, this one seems to be the best. The intro could use some shortening (and the overall review could use some tightening), but overall, it delivers a content experience. I’m not unhappy that this is in position 1.
From here it goes downhill.
Best homes and gardens in position 2:
That’s not bad or offensive, but it’s not particularly helpful to me as a searcher who’s in buying mode. I don’t need all this preamble. Can we get to the point please? I came for a review, not several generic non-essential paragraphs of text that forced me to scroll or just sit out the annoyance.
Of course, a Google SERP wouldn’t be complete without Forbes, an absolutely respected authority on air purifiers (and just about everything else under the sun, according to Google) in position 7:
The introduction does not mention cigarette smoke; the only mention comes much later in the section explaining how they chose the best air purifiers (“It’s no secret that breathing smoke, whether it’s from forest fires or cigarettes…”).
(Funny aside, once upon a time, Forbes used to complain loudly about Google’s unfairness. Check them out now.)
And digging much deeper after some retail content (Amazon, Best Buy, etc.), you’ll find the opposite of a hidden gem from Blueair at position 9, with some seriously terrible content:
Not more. Wow! so awful Thanks for that irrelevant history lesson, I needed a nap.
Look, this is just a query. I could easily spend hours finding examples in endless queries and sectors. But we all know the results will be similar.
Google is a baby wading through a pile of content garbage
The featured image I used for this article is the best metaphor I could think of: Google is a baby in a content dump that has run out of space.
We seem to be stuck in a repetitive cycle where people copy evil content, because it’s successful, and then hope it ranks because that’s what Google ranks, only to be upset when that content doesn’t succeed.
For me, the solution is clear, although not easy:
Become a useful and credible brand. This is not a quick or easy process.
So keep playing the “long game” of SEO and don’t just wait for Google to rank your content and complain when it doesn’t.
Create better content that is legitimately useful to people. Keep improving all aspects of your SEO.
Content creators need to improve. But so does Google.
For its part, Google has indicated that changes are coming. In November, Google advised us to “fasten our seat belts”. the company he reiterated this in January I again in February.
History tells me that when Google faces an onslaught of criticism about its search quality, Google tends to hit back. When will that be remains the big question.
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