Matt Cutts on Good Guys Not Spamming Do Stand a Chance

[engine]

Google's Matt Cutts talks about good guys not spamming and they will stand a chance in the SERPs.
He talks about google getting better at fighting spam, so that should open up the playing field for the good guys. Well,, that's my take on it.

[brotherhood of LAN]

They are somewhat related imo, if a coding error results in a quirky layout on a popular browser, negative user reaction (clicking away from the site) gets into the territory where there's something fundamentally wrong with the site. It's good to validate from the purist's POV.

I haven't watched the video... if I heard the question directed to MC I could predict his answer. Could be a good game in that. "what would MC say".

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

We seem to be forgetting that Google is just a search engine.

[bluntforce]

1) minified coding
2) lossless image optimisation
3)eliminating render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold

That's all nice, but I'd never use it as part of a ranking algorithm. While I use some of that on sites, it is a convenience thing, with no consideration of ranking. Between a fast site without good content and a slow site with good content, I'll put up with the slow site every time. I like to think other users do the same.

[ColourOfSpring]

Between a fast site without good content and a slow site with good content, I'll put up with the slow site every time.

Exactly, especially if the difference between the fast and slow site is 0.5 seconds page load time. By the way, the biggest influence I've ever seen to page load times is the actual hosting setup, not so much what's actually on the page. All very well minifying everything when your site's on a shared server hosting 2000 other sites.

[CaptainSalad2]

They are somewhat related imo, if a coding error results in a quirky layout on a popular browser, negative user reaction

Completely agree!

Between a fast site without good content and a slow site with good content, I'll put up with the slow site every time.

Lol why does the FAST site have to have worse content than the SLOW site in the scenario m8? What if the two sites have equally good content but one site is faster than the other, shouldn’t google give preferences to the faster site as a deciding factor, wouldn't you?

load time is the actual hosting setup, not so much what's actually on the page.

I agree if your talking about broadband users but mobile users? Completely disagree because their download abilities are a more important consideration than the server setup (when out and about), disagree?

[ColourOfSpring]

CaptainSalad2, of course a fast site with great content is the ideal, but the point is that great content far outweighs speed factors. In fact, poor content slows down the user experience incredibly as it means going to that page was a literal waste of time - so content itself is a speed factor.

Server response times are important regardless of the device you use. I've seen latency that runs into several seconds on slower servers. This is before your content download even occurs. I agree with you that unnecessarily large files don't help the mobile visitor, but I also think these issues get over-played like so many other technical issues with sites (I've seen this again and again over 17 years). I'm not saying "not important", just "not as important as you think it is" when you look holistically at the bigger picture of what's important for a website.

[CaptainSalad2]

@ColourOfSpring just to clarify because somehow its been twisted, I don't believe Google do use these signals it was only my opinion they SHOULD use these signals (not to trump content), speed only being one of a couple of "onsite" quality signals I would like to see them factor in for the entire "user experience" they suggest is important to them (see recent above the fold ad update, the user experience trumps content).

In truth I can say through my testing over the years having a site that passes all of the following tests with flying colours does sweet FA.

1) [validator.w3.org...]
2) [validator.w3.org...]
3) [webmaster.yandex.com...]
4) [jigsaw.w3.org...]
5) [validator.w3.org...]
6) [developers.google.com...]
7) [try.powermapper.com...]

This also includes great original content, I don't believe google is smart enough to asses what is great "text/content" but they are able to weight incoming links.

Sadly from my experiments the only quality signal that gets you ranking well is links, I know you need great content to get links.. but since links can/are so easily/widely manipulated and these other metrics cant be faked/manipulated I personally would like to see them weighted to some extent as a quality signal, just my opinion nothing more!

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Until Google gets smart enough to rate a site on its content alone (if ever) it will be hit or miss.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Until Google gets smart enough to rate a site on its content alone (if ever) it will be hit or miss.

Doubt that'd ever happen. The person/thing saying it is important too.

[EditorialGuy]

Doubt that'd ever happen. The person/thing saying it is important too.

Other problems with rating a site "on its content alone":

1) Quality is in the eye of the beholder, at least to some degree. How is an algorithm going to determine that Jane Doe's recipe for Queen of Sheba cake is better than Susie Smith's? Or that Barry Schwartz's post about eight-keyword search strings at Search Engine Land is better (or worse) than his post on the same topic at Search Engine Roundtable?

2) Sometimes a tiebreaker is needed. Without link data, breaking the tie would be more difficult.