content not important?

empty website #1

[JonB]

if you search at google for "empty website" then check nubmer one result.content lives by its name.there are some 40 backlinks,almost 1 million results for this phrase.

so how is it possible site with absolutelly no content to be number 1? I have a big feeling for past few months that back linking is single most importnat factor in google alghorith.Also i have a friend who is affilaite and his site is nice and clean ,but basiacly like thousands of other sites in this field and has some good back links and he is top of google with major keyphrases.(he is not in dmoz).i am seeing this in more and more cases.

i hope this is not violation of WebmasterWorld term since realy this webnsite is empty -no ads, no marekting, no benefit to gain.also without specific example my "arguments" have no value.

does anyone have idea why site with no content can get such a good ranking?

IMO those who say "good content is king" are wrong. THey are probably confusing it with good traffic becasue they have LARGE site (1000+ pages or so) so it appears that good content is getting them traffic - but in the end it is large site+specific page SE optimizations (key words on importnat places at page which has nothing to do with good content)that gets them good traffic not good content.

i really am gettign this feeling that backlinking is more importnat than anything - i jsut found above example in some slovenian site and i jsut havre no other explanation that would prove them wrong.i eman every other site below #1 has sOME content whcih is of course by default better than no content at all.

what do others think? is content dead? or did i make mistake in my "calculations" somewhere?:)

jon

[nutsandbolts]

I suppose it's like example.com or bluewidgets etc - people link to it as an example. Plus, I think it deserves to be number one because it IS an empty website! ;)

[jamesyap]

hey, that site match excatly what the user search for! It is a very good result! Smart google algo! :)

I found another silly stuff here -
[turnofftheinternet.com...]

[JonB]

I suppose it's like example.com or bluewidgets etc - people link to it as an example.

i know - that would prove what i said that only backlinking is importnat and not good or in this case any content at all. that is the "main question" of my post - is good content dead or no? :)

Plus, I think it deserves to be number one because it IS an empty website!

nutsandbolts and james - by "THEORY", "common sense" and "human logic" of course emtpy website is deserved to be #1 since it is - empty website.it cant get more closer than that :)

but we are talkign about machine algo,they operate by set of rules and not "common sense" - this thing is logical only to human mind not machine.hm..i am having hard time to explain what i mean since my english is pretty poor.

Jon

[aek]

That website is number 1 because people are likely to link to it using empty website in the link text and it's a page rank 5. Google's success has been based around these two factors and this is a prime example.

[needinfo]

JonB I agree with you, i have also seen for the past 2 to 3 months sites with little or next to no contect ranking extremely well above other sites with plenty of good unique content. The only thing I cans ee which is placing these no content sites above the rest is their greater number of backlinks, this is always the case.

[ciml]

Jon, there are many examples. "download" being the most commonly cited (Flash Player and ICQ home page). Didn't Google or its founders use the example of the Whitehouse coming top for a US President, even when his name wasn't on the page? It's a feature; the emphasis on importance and link text were in part what made Google different.

Each month, some people believe that Google give more weight to these things, and each month others believe that Google give less weight to these things.

The factors all work together, if you have the same backlinks as another but with better optimised content then you will beat it.

[Susanne]

Something else: if NOBODY has done any kind of optimisation for ANY site that comes up in the SERPs for "empty website", somebody still has to be #1! Being at the top of the first page in Google does NOT necessary mean that the site is optimised or has been designed according to the wishes of SEs. Is just happens to be that fact that somebody HAS to be #1, no matter how useless the site...

is good content dead or no?

No, of course not! I have seen several examples of sites with very few backlinks that have made it to the top thanks to content. Lots of content usually means lots of pages and that in turn means a BIG website. What will look more important to a spider: a small site with ten, very good, pages or a big site with 400 pages covering the same content? Even though the smaller site might have many more links, the bigger one could make it to the front page in search engines.

[chiyo]

The number of backlinks should be a pretty good, though imperfect, indicator of quality, especially the "quality" of backlinks - which is addressed in part by PR.

It works because good content will be linked to automatically by others without asking, which makes up 99.9% of our own external incoming links. Thats much more difficult for non-unque or low quality information content, which makes it a reasonable filter.

What is hard for the algo to deal with at that moment is a few real bugbears - off topic reciprocal links, linkfarms and basically what i would call "opportunistic linking" like rings of seemingly independent websites which are not, not to mention paying for pagerank.

Once the algo has sorted that out there will be even better SERPS and the empty website will still be on top, which is where it should be.

[decaff]

Seems to me that google is right on with this top listing.
the keyword phrase searched is "empty website" and guess what....that is exactly what you get in the #1 position...an empty website....how do you develop content for an "empty website"?....
If you look at the source you see that the keyword phrase is masterfully carried through from the url string right into the description....well since there is no body content (and we all know that google weighs in heavily on body content) then all there is to pull from is the url/title/description and keywords?....

The guy even has a trademark on the name...I wonder if this is legitimate...I see a massively profitable business idea here..