randle - 5:51 pm on Jan 23, 2013 (gmt 0)

It's worth noting in all these updates that Google is continuing to link back to the May 6, 2011 Google Blog article by Amit Singhal on the kinds of signs which Google is considering when determining quality....

For some time now, its really more about Google looking for signs of "anti quality", identifying what they consider "low quality" site (pages) and pushing them down in the results. Thats very different than the old days of them looking for "signals of quality" and then scoring that, and pushing those sites (pages) up.

Its not a subtle difference, or an excersice in arguing semantics.

Our site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find "high-quality" sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content.

"reducing the rankings of low-quality content" = addition by subtraction. The question is does it really work.