Articles penalised for being too long?

[Rasputin]

I have one site which I haven't looked at much for a couple of years but have just started improving the site, mostly by thinking about rewriting 'thin' articles.

But it is clear after investigating that the articles on our site that are performing the worst in the serps are not at all thin - in fact they tend to be very substantial articles, typically 1000-2000 words whereas the articles in the serps including wikipedia are only 100-200 words.

Our articles are not fluff and padding, but relate to a widget where we have an expert in the field writing about them, and elaborating far more than other sites do (the author is a university professor on the subject).

To confuse matters slightly, the articles relate to a 'foreign widget'. The serps in the original language (Italian) are as I would expect, long and detailed articles like our own (including wikipedias), but these more detailed articles don't exist on English language sites, except on our own.

Our articles that are less detailed and of similar length to articles on the same subject on other sites seem to rate much better in the serps. So it seems reasonable to conclude that if an article is much longer than some 'google average' for that keyword then it is moved down in the results.

Could this be correct? If an article is much longer than the competition do google automatically assume it must be padded or spam? If so what can I do about it?

[MikeNoLastName]

> Searchers are impatient. They haven't time to read through reams of text when the next site is only a click away. They want information to be easy to find, in bite-sized chunks.<

I think I agree with this the most, except in my vision/experience, replace "Searchers" with "Search Engines." I always know where my Ctrl-F key is if I'm in a hurry to narrow down a term once the page loads.
I look at it as the SE's are tending toward having an attention span less than a dog ("Ooh, look a squirrel!") and can handle only one main keyword per page, ESPECIALLY when involving a major top-1000 search term/phrase. IMHO, adding more detail and length inevitably tends to introduce additional confusing (to the SE) keywords and thus 'unrelated' topics (again only as far as the SE thinks it is unrelated) and reduces the emphasis on the primary topic you are trying to rank for. Plus bigger pages usually take longer to load which G seems to consider an increasingly major negative factor these days. Think about all those mobile users with only '10Gb monthly data to share' amongst their family.

> Try breaking the text up with suitable headings to make it easy to navigate. <

I also don't think just breaking it up helps much. Perhaps for the user, but not the dumb SE.

The bigger issue comes where you NEED to cover a large topic exhaustively by necessity (e.g. sports scores or stats, photos for identifying poisonous widgets in the field, product color options, celeb mug shots? - not the best examples but you get the idea). Does breaking it into many smaller multiple pages actually make it easier or more frustrating for a real user to navigate when they are ultimately going to HAVE to go from one page to the next to the next before they cover the subject or even try to look for the T's in an alphabetized list? I HATE certain "authority" sites which tease you with a headline then make you click through 10 pages with 2 lines of text and 5 ads on each to finish the topic. I've also found G does not take kindly to pages with the title 'Poisonous widgets starting with the letter T' especially when you have 26 of them for each letter.

[EditorialGuy]

I HATE certain "authority" sites which tease you with a headline then make you click through 10 pages with 2 lines of text and 5 ads on each to finish the topic.

So? Just because they're annoying doesn't mean you have to be. There's a huge spectrum between "5,000 words of unbroken text on one page" and "50 pages with 100 words on each page."

If you feel confident in your editorial judgment, use it.

[GreenDog18]

This is just my crazy idea but... I believe Google looks at word count and determines how long it would take for someone with an average reading level to read the article.

If that actual time is significantly lower than the time it should take, Google demotes the page.

In some niche's people will stick around and read long content, in some others, they won't.

Just my thought. I could be way off base.

[superclown2]

I believe Google looks at word count and determines how long it would take for someone with an average reading level to read the article.

If that actual time is significantly lower than the time it should take, Google demotes the page.

Interesting theory. However I have sites with 200 words on a page and a top two place in the SERPs and some with 700+ in the same position for similar keyphrases. That doesn't prove anything either way of course.

In some niche's people will stick around and read long content, in some others, they won't.

Absolutely, and it's also been clear for a while that Google has different ranking rules for different keyphrases.

The important thing is focus. That's worth saying again: focus. If your extra words add to it, great. If not, get rid of them or put them on another page.

[superclown2]

One thing to keep in mind, though: Writing long, in-depth articles (and knowing how to make them enticing to readers) isn't a job for amateurs. It's harder than it looks.

If I have an important article to write I write it myself. I have paid top authors in the past and finished up heavily editing or deleting masses of their work as superfluous fluff.

If you find a good editor who can write highly relevant articles without padding them out I'd appreciate an introduction.