What Google Considers to be Good Webpages

[goodroi]

Google tells their quality checkers to look at the page as a whole. Here are some of the things they are looking for.

Google looks for these spam signals:
- PPC ads very prominent on the page.
- Copied content.
- If you remove the low quality page elements (ads & copied content), the page has no other value.

They also look for these positive page signals:
- Page is well-organized.
- Ads are well identified and not distracting.
- Content is original or the top ranking result.
- The page has value to the user.

If you are unsure about your webpages ask yourself:
- Does your page provide a good user experience?
- Does your page contain original content that is helpful?
- Is the page designed for human users?
- If you remove the ads and copied content, is there a good amount of helpful resource left?

[varun21]

And once you assure that your page is actually an excellent resource, you get Penguin :(

[aristotle]

goodroi -
What do these "quality checkers" do if they decide that a page doesn't have much value? What action do they take?

[netmeg]

They fill out the EWOQ form.

There was a document being passed around yesterday purporting to be the leaked 2012 Google Guidelines. I dunno whether or not it was genuine, and I dunno whether or not it was taken down from whoever posted it. But it was grabbable yesterday.

[aristotle]

They fill out the EWOQ form.
- Thanks netmeg.

That's all well and good.. But now I'm wondering what happens to the form after it's filled out. Is anything done with the information?

[goodroi]

These basic ideas have been announced and confirmed by Google before:

Google launches "above the fold" algo update that looks at page layout & ad space
[webmasterworld.com...]

Google announces update to go after MFAs using copied content aka Panda
[webmasterworld.com...]

Google can be using these quality checkers to manually apply penalties or help research the automated updates or maybe just double checking the accuracy of the updates. Either way webmasters should remind themselves everyday what Google's idea of a good webpage is.

[lucy24]

Content is <snip> the top ranking result.

If you google "recursion" does "google" come out #1?

[zeus]

I have now looked at several 1-5 sites for different keywords and I can not see any that go by googles suggestion for a good site, not 1, I even saw one that go complete the other way as what google says and ranks no.1 with 5 banners above fold, keyword stuffed title, link exchanges, very low unique text, we are talking 2 words that is changed on each page..... I can go on. Slowly I think its all about luck or you need a big company to rank.

[aristotle]

zeus --
In my opinion less than 1% of all webpages are high quality. The rest are low to medium quality. So for a lot of searches, no high quality relevant pages exist, and therefore you necessarily see low to medium quality pages at the top

[seollc]

I've been haviong great luck in Google results simply by doing my very best to build the best websites on any given topic.

If you build a site good enough, it will actually raise red flags with Google's alorithm and a human reviewer will look at your site. If it is indeed a very relevant and useful site, the reviewer will designate the site as an "Authority Site" and it will become almost unbeatable in the search engine results. In addition, when a site is designated as an authority site, it has extra links in the search result listing, so it draws more attention and might allow a visitor to jump right into a more specific link in your website.

Aristotle is actually right. Most websites and webpages are actually fairly low quality, so it is still relatively easy for an excellent web developer with an SEO and site conversions background to create a site that will literally be the best in the world and worthy of being on page 1 for thousands of keyword phrases.

[aristotle]

it is still relatively easy for an excellent web developer with an SEO and site conversions background to create a site that will literally be the best in the world and worthy of being on page 1 for thousands of keyword phrases.

I wouldn't say that it's "easy". I do agree that it's still quite possible to create the "best" website in most niches. But it usually requires not only knowledge, but also hard work, time and effort. The reason there are so many bad websites is that most people either don't have the capability to create a good site or else aren't willing to expend the necessary time and effort.