The most obvious change in the SEO industry is that it has hit article marketing very hard. SEO practitioners used to publish low-quality articles on websites such as ezinearticles.com as a form of link building.
Apparently, the hardest-hit sites had less attractive designs, more telegram dating philippines intrusive advertising, too many words, low editing standards, repetitive wording, flawed research, and overall, did not come across as helpful or credible.
When Google discussed algorithm development with Wired, Singhal said they first sent test documents to human quality raters and asked them questions like "Would you be willing to give this website your credit card information?" and "Would you be willing to give this website a prescription for a drug to give to your child?"
Katz said engineers developed a rigorous set of questions, including 'Do you think this site is authoritative? Would this site be okay in a magazine? Does this site have too many ads?'
They then developed the algorithm by comparing various ranking signals with human quality rankings, according to the interview.
Singar describes it as finding a plane in hyperspace that separates the good places from the bad places.
Singhal later published the following 23 questions as guiding questions on which the algorithm is based:
Would you trust the information provided in this article?
Is the article written by an expert or enthusiast who is familiar with the subject, or is it superficial in nature?
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slight keyword variations?
Are you willing to provide this site with your credit card information?
Does the article contain spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Are these topics driven by genuine interests of the site’s readers, or is the site generating content by guessing what might rank well in search engines?
Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
Does the page have substantial value compared to other pages in the search results?
What level of quality control is there over the content?
Does the article describe both sides of the story?
Is the site a recognized authority on its subject?
Is the content mass-produced or outsourced by a large number of creators, or distributed across a large network of sites, so that a single page or site doesn’t get much attention or care?
Is the article well edited, or does it seem sloppy or hastily written?
Would you trust the information provided by this website for health-related queries?
When the name is mentioned, would you recognize the website as an authoritative source?
Does the article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does the article contain insightful analysis or self-explanatory interesting information?
Is this a page you would like to save, share with a friend or recommend?
Does the article have too many ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
Would you like to see this article in a print magazine, encyclopedia, or book?
Is the article brief, thin on content, or lacking in useful details?
Was the page created with great care and attention to detail, or was it created with less attention to detail?
Do users complain when they see pages from this site?
It’s also a good idea to think about what Google’s human quality raters need to think about. The following quote about low-quality content is significant:
Consider this example: Most students have to write an essay for high school or college. Many students save time and energy by taking shortcuts in one or more of the following ways: