For the past 20 years, probably more, the debate about Google giving preferential treatment to big sites over small sites has been a big topic in the SEO world and that hasn’t changed in 2024 since 2004. Danny Sullivan, l ‘Google search link, said recently X, “yes, we should be rewarding the best content, regardless of site size.” He added that he hopes Google will improve on this, saying, “I hope we get better here.”
This answer came after a piece called How Google is killing independent sites like ours was posted on House Fresh by Gisele Navarro and Danny Ashton. Go read it, I know many of you already have.
Danny Sullivan responded to the criticism by saying: We will do better. Yes, Google has been saying this for a long time and we are still waiting for the next update. Sullivan wrote:
Thanks. I appreciated the thoughtfulness of the post, the concerns, and the detail. I’ve passed this on to our search team along with my thoughts that I’d like to see us do more to ensure we’re showing a better diversity of results that includes both small and large publications.
A note on an otherwise excellent piece of writing. The article suggests that we do some sort of “manual checking” of claims made by pages. we don’t This reference and link is about manual reviews we do if a page has a manual *spam* action and submits a reconsideration request. This is completely different from how our automated ranking systems look to reward content.
Somewhat related, just making a claim and talking about a “rigorous testing process” and following an “EEAT checklist” does not guarantee a higher ranking or somehow automatically make a page perform better. We talk about EEAT because it’s a concept that aligns with how we try to rank good content. But our automated systems don’t look at a page and see a statement like “I tried!” and I think it’s better for that alone. Rather, the things we talk about with EEAT are related to what people find useful in content. Doing things in general for people is what our automated systems aim to reward, using different cues. Month here.
Thanks again for the post. I hope we do better in the future with these kinds of problems.
Gisele Navarro responded by saying:
Regarding Google’s EEAT guidelines, I completely understand your point and why you developed them. My point was perhaps more geared towards how these guidelines have become a branding exercise for many, where the focus is on ππππππππ these qualities rather than developing them.
I didn’t expect this post to magically fix all of these issues, but it’s encouraging to hear that you agree that there’s a lack of diversity in results at the moment, with big posts cannibalizing large sections of Google’s results at the bottom of its well . – the well-known brands (and their content factories) rather than the quality of the content itself.
Danny Sullivan replied again, I hope to do better:
I agree that they over-interpret the self-assessment questions on our key page here.
As a kind of box-ticking exercise rather than focusing on the big picture of “You’re doing things that are generally useful for people, because that’s also useful for Google. Mention these questions about how people can self-assess, can’t it? like Google does. But I’ve mentioned before that I’d like to see this page updated more, and it’s one of my top priorities that I keep expressing internally. Unfortunately, changing our docs can take time, so it will probably be a few more weeks or months.
As for the larger question of, shall we say, “big site vs. small site,” I’ve raised that concern over the past few weeks as well, because it shouldn’t (and isn’t always) that way. But yes, we should be rewarding the best content, regardless of site size. Like I said, I hope we do better here.
It reminds me a bit of when Matt Cutts, Google’s former spam cop, a decade ago asked SEOs to tell Google which small sites should rank that didn’t.
If there’s a small website you think should do better on Google, tell us more here: https://t.co/s80BibIBhN
β Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) August 28, 2013
This form is still open, but I doubt anyone has access to it anymore.
I know many of you are tired of hearing “we’ll do better” from the Google search team:
You keep saying this for months, I mean it’s your job, but at some point you should think about maintaining your credibility and reputation as a nice person who helped build this community.
β EmGee (@mathi_gee) February 20, 2024
“I’d like to see us do more to make sure we’re showing a better diversity of results that includes both small and large publications.” Does this mean it will be implemented?
β Keanu (@BulletDodgerSEO) February 20, 2024
“I hope we do better in the future” doesn’t sound very promising
β Bill Grinstead (@BillGrins) February 20, 2024
Danny, save everyone’s time. Just say high DA and backlinks win the game.
Your comment on the team is not helping anyone. Your team probably doesn’t even see what you’re going through!
β Raj (@Raj_seo_) February 20, 2024
I remember visiting Google Dublin in 2014 or 2015.
I was there for the Web Summit, but (ironically) Danny also arranged for me to visit Google Dublin and talk to about 15-20 members of the search team there.
(I was EIC with @sengineland at the time.)
I didn’t have any… https://t.co/XgfHlQMpMP
β Matt McGee (@mattmcgee) February 20, 2024
Heck, last night when I covered this a Land of seekers I showed how Reddit beat the original HouseFresh article!
And then as expected:
Article about an article that is surpassed by another article that is now surpassed by another article about something that surpasses something something π€ͺπ€―#SEO where the irony and the jokes write themselves, but you know, artificial intelligence and all that will definitely fix thatβ¦ pic.twitter.com/5658Ajbvh6
β Peter Mindenhall (@PeterMindenhall) February 21, 2024
‘Google is killing independent sites’ ranks 7th for me…now eclipsed by a new article from SEland, Reddit, X (not original authors), MetaNews, Hacker News, Linkedin and then the original article.
If that’s not further proof, I don’t know what is…
CC @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/7K8lDq9fZE
β Caitlin Hathaway (@CaitlinTheSEO) February 21, 2024
Sad to see…
Discussion in the forum a X.
[ad_2]
Source link
