Hard to Find Quality Content on the Web

[aristotle]

I've been reading some of the threads about Google's attempt to give higher rankings to high-quality content. Perhaps one of the problems is that there's a lot more low-quality than high-quality on the web.

I say this because I'm working on a new article about a fairly well-known historical event, but when I search for information on Google, I can't find anything of much value. I have an old book published almost 60 years ago that has far more information about the subject than anything I can find on the web.

So I guess my point is that a lot of low-quality content is getting high rankings in the SERPs simply because there isn't any high quality content.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

That or the algo's busted and is favoring "trustable" websites :-)

[Staffa]

When I do a search for something and the first results are rubbish like you seem to get I skip straight to page 10 or 15 and maybe from there on I may find some helpful site which is now buried by the rubbish

[aristotle]

I agree that something useful could be buried deep down in the SERPs. But I searched for some very specific terms, terms that would likely only be found in a good treatment of the subject, and still couldn't find much. Wikipedia has some scattered information, but far less than my old book has.

[Staffa]

I can, of course, not speak for the subject that you are researching but I find that there is less and less useful content on the web to be found.

A few years ago I could easily spend an hour on a subject by reading several helpful sites while these days I'm usually done in a few minutes.

I guess, since not every site owner is a Google/SEO geek, good sites are disappearing through lack of visitors and disillusionment of the owner.

[viggen]

I am a bit suprised that you couldnt find anything useful on history related terms what you were looking for, being in that field i do allot of searches for history related events and apart from my own site, i do find allot of infos. (and at least in my time period Panda hasnt played a role at all)

Also try discussion forums for that time period, they are a treasure trove, like in my forum there are historians, archaeologists mixed with reenactors and hobby enthusiasts and almost always there is someone who has an answer to the obscurest questions...

[aristotle]

viggen - There are some articles about this subject, but they mostly gave general (or shallow) information. It's detailed specific information I'm looking for.

Anyway, the main point I wanted to make is - whatever quality information there is on the web, it's being swamped out by a huge flood of mediocre information.

[g1smd]

Any piece of information, good bad or otherwise, published any time in the last two decades is now replicated on hundreds or thousands of sites. It's hard to find a variety of information, and hard to find anything of any substance for some topics.