Google and content - is less content better?

[Garya]

I noticed in my main niches which is very competitive. The top 3 sites have removed 95% of there content. The first 2 sites have 1 listing which is duplicate content the second site just has a map and the third site has just 50 words.
So I did an experiment my one page had about 700 words of original content. and went to page 6 after penguin 2.0. I removed 600 words and added a photo of a map. Today
I went back to the bottom of the first
page.

[chrisv1963]

It sounds like my biggest mistake was putting a lot of useful content on my website ... Good content is probably considered black hat by Google since you might influence the serps with it :-)

[Garya]

I guess they think if you are writing good content you are trying to manipulate google search results.

[jinxed]

I'd go a step further and go for the blank page approach. This method avoids publishing low quality content.

[hitchhiker]

No jinxed, you're out of date mate. The blank page approach is also blackhat. Now it's the blank DNS entry approach. Pay attention man!

--- sorry --

@Garya - two options in my opinion:

1) If it's working for you, and you're comfortable and not ruining the experience for the user, you could try it. But don't do it too much.

2) Wait a bit before making any changes. The SERPs might be a little jenked* up right now.

Whatever feels right. I'd go with a little of 1) and lots of 2)

*I learnt that word from Planet13 :)

[Garya]

@hitchhiker

Yep I just did 2 pages for now and will
wait and see. I only had 2 inter pages affected and they have come back now.

Some of my others sites inner pages are showing up again after dropping a lot of links to them.

It looks like homepage keyword penalties will take longer, even though Google said
they did not penalize my site.

[indyank]

is it a page for a transactional query or a page for the information query?

[Garya]

@indyank
It is a page for information on a area like Santa Fe and a search for property from that page.
I deleted 95% of the information on the area.

[indyank]

Do you notice any change in the number of property searches on that page, since the change? Has it increased or decreased or remains at the same level?

[Garya]

About the same as I have over 50,000 subscribers. That come back daily

[instand1]

Maybe it's not a new penalty for too much content, but a scraping of an outdated bonus for too many words that do not add to the user experience. (More adjusted to smaller screens of mobile devices.)

[indyank]

Garya, I am not asking about the traffic. I am more interested in knowing how many visitors do a search for properties on the page? Do you see any increase or decrease in the number of property searches, from the time you reduced content on it?

[chrisv1963]

"Anything you put on your web page can and will be used against you"

[Martin Ice Web]

@Garya,

I can confirm this pattern. I added a lot of related and usefull content - no small talk - to a widget ( very competitive, lots of searches daily ) after Panda 1. Like everybody knows, adding content is not getting you back. After the hit in early April 2013, i decided to kill the content and left only a two sentence description. The page is now almost empty. Thats Quality.
But, why do we wonder: Pandas are not able to read!

What should i say? After about 2 weeks the widget began to rank again.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Garya,

I can confirm this pattern. I added a lot of related and usefull content - no small talk - to a widget ( very competitive, lots of searches daily ) after Panda 1. Like everybody knows, adding content is not getting you back. After the hit in early April 2013, i decided to kill the content and left only a two sentence description. The page is now almost empty. Thats Quality.
But, why do we wonder: Pandas are not able to read!

What should i say? After about 2 weeks the widget began to rank again.

[jinxed]

The overall aim should be to fit as much useful content possible into the most concise manner possible. People don't enjoy reading more than they need to. Do you?

[Martin Ice Web]

jinxed, know we are at the Point: Make sites for users not for SE.

Do you want to give the user the Information he needs to use the widget on your ecom site or is the user forced to search again and get the information on a informational site? Since Panda/penguin the user is forced to do so.
Google needs to correct this.