Is Seth Godin guilty of publishing "thin content"? (I bet post-Panda Google thinks he is.)

Seth Godin’s post for today is 79 words long, including the headline.

That’s a pretty short post.

When post-Panda Google finds that post, which they undoubtedly already have, will they consider it to be "thin" and of low value? More to the point, will they then penalize Seth’s entire blog in the search results because of this "thin content"?

This goes to the heart of my biggest problem with the Panda update.

Who gets to determine what quality really means?

As any fan of Seth’s blog will tell you, part of his appeal is that he shares rare nuggets of quality information in just a few words. He doesn’t need to write 500 words to make his point.

But what does the Google algorithm make of his short posts? Can it discern quality within brevity? I bet it can’t.

The idea that brevity should be equated to low value is absurd.

Let’s imagine Seth’s blog does drop in the rankings. So he manages to speak to someone at Google about it, and the Google guy says, "Sorry dude, all I can suggest is that you add more content to your posts."

So Seth then goes back and adds another 500 words to his posts. They would be 500 words of fluff, because he already made his point with 79 words.

Now Google comes back and says, "Ah, 579 words. Now that’s quality!"

But, of course, it’s not. It’s fluff.

There is an underlying hypocrisy here.

Google tells us to write for our readers, not the search engines.

But now, post-Panda, if writing for our readers involves writing short content, we’re screwed. In fact, we are forced to do exactly what Google tells us not to do – which is to write for the search engines by adding 500 words of fluff to our posts or pages.

Am I missing something here? Am I wrong?

If I’m not wrong, then I think Google is making a huge mistake.

 

 

Comments

[Steve Seager]

We all know it's not how big it is, but what you do with it. I'm sure Google does too. That's why the Panda update was developed with a panel approach plus surveys - qualitative. Not quantitative. Sort of makes the 'size matters' point moot, right?

[richard pook]

Yes I think he is. I've never been a huge fan of his, even though so many people have tried to tell me how wonderful he is. I think a case may be made for him being quite revolutionary in the beginning but now it seems his books especially are variations on a theme and could be summed up in a long blog post rather than a book. Maybe that's it, he's scaling his content?

[Katherine]

Yes, I think some kind of Internet committee needs to be formed from all kinds of different interests, skill sets, specialties etc. Google's ability to make a break a website doesn't seem right. After that algorithm change in February I thought I was lost to the world. But somehow I got back up to #4 for keyword of my authority site.

[Dayne Shuda]

I disagree with this point.

"Google is more sophisticated than a simple equation of short = low quality; long = high quality."

It's certainly true to a point, but with this update and based on general observations I'd say at this point people probably feel Google is this simple.

Hopefully they can improve :)

[Ed Brown]

Vanessa - you also make a good point. Perhaps someone like Mr Goodin who's been blogging for years will not be penalised by the panda update in the way say a legitimate new start up would struggle if they don't have oodles and oodles of fluffy content on their site that effectively screams at the search engine to notice the site. Whereas from a user point of view, you'd only appreciate the good shiz... (even if no one really reads anything on the internet!)

[Nick Usborne]

Vanessa, I simply used the figure 500 as an example. I do think that most of us would think if we wrote a page or post of just 79 words, there would be a real danger that Google would consider the content as being "thin".

[Ed Brown]

Good point well made - I trained to "learn" how to write - on a journalism course - and easily the hardest task was writing the 60-70 word articles that required all the facts to be presented in a publishable structure.

500+ words of repsun fluff aint quality in my book.

I guess perhaps if you post often and occasionally go to "feature" length then that might appease the panda - but some of the most interesting sites have short, succinct articles... (unlike my comment!)

[Vanessa Fox]

I think you are missing something, which is that Google is more sophisticated than a simple equation of short = low quality; long = high quality.

When people ask me how much content should be on a page, I always tell them it should be exactly the length that provides substantial value.

This post is based on an incorrect premise (that content has to be 500 words long for Google to consider to be high quality and that Google automatically assumes brief = thin).

[Koozai_mike]

A really good point Nick. Hopefully Google will take other ranking factors in to consderation such as the fact Seth is frequently linked to, and gets a lot of tweets (etc) on Social Media.

I for one love the shortness of Seth's points so agree that if you can say it in 100 words you should.

[Donna Fontenot]

If you take a look at the trends data for his blog, it would seem to back you up.

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=http%3A%2F%2Fsethgodin.typepad.com%2F&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0