Insufficient content

What does Google Adsense exactly mean by "insufficient content"?

[Chris12345]

I recently made a website with some friends and wanted to make some money with it. So we decided to do an application with adsense. A few days later we got the message that our website had insufficient content. So we added some articles to our site with some text, and tried again. But again we got a mail "insufficient content". Now we tried it again and we got the same mail.

So, we clearly have insufficient text-content on our site, but when do we have enough? Like do you need to have hundreds of pages full of text, or are some short texts already enough?

Thanks!

Chris

[LifeinAsia]

Hi and welcome to Webmaster World!

How many is "some" articles? 5? 10? And how long is each page? And how short are "some short texts?"

Google wants sites that have lots of content- certainly enough content on the page that it can figure out what the page is about in order to run relevant ads.

There is no definitive answer. But I would say that only 1 or 2 paragraphs of original content per page is definitely insufficient.

Another issue- what are your traffic levels like? If you're only getting 5-10 visitors/day, it's going to be very hard to monetize with AdSense (or most other programs).

[Chris12345]

Hi,thanks for your reply! I have now 30 articles or something on my website with photo's and videos and 1 paragraph of text on each article. So that's not enough?

I got some free budget to advertise my website so I hope my traffic will grow.

[Lame_Wolf]

I would never call one paragraph an article.

[LifeinAsia]

1 paragraph of text on each article. So that's not enough?

No. I wouldn't call it an article unless it has at least 3-5 paragraphs.

[ember]

I don't consider an article an article unless it has at least 500 words.

[tangor]

Can't cut and paste your way to prosperity. (Aside, you really can't make a lot of money with google these days... that ship has long since sailed).

Better off opening a bakery in your home town. :)

[ember]

Aside, you really can't make a lot of money with google these days... that ship has long since sailed

Not so.

[tangor]

Not so.

It is true the top 5% do pretty fair, the other 95% not so much. Just read the google threads here at webmasterworld! :)

[piatkow]

Not so.

Its certainly no longer a "fire and forget" way to pay your hosting or make a little beer money from low to medium traffic site.

At least I have stopped seeing people complaining on forums that they haven't received any money after a couple of weeks of ads or affiliate links on a site with absolutely zero visits so maybe expectations are getting marginally less unrealistic.

[netmeg]

It is true the top 5% do pretty fair, the other 95% not so much. Just read the google threads here at webmasterworld! :)

Your percentages are way off. And WebmasterWorld is not representative of either the 95% or the 5%.

[webcentric]

Your percentages are way off. And WebmasterWorld is not representative of either the 95% or the 5%.

Well said!

[hannamyluv]

It is true the top 5% do pretty fair, the other 95% not so much.

You are actually right in this, but this has been the way pretty much any business (even bakeries) works, especially if you throw in every get rich quick scheme and Avon/Amway business ever started in the brick and mortar world and the statistics are actually pretty close to that as well. Many will fail, few will succeed. Still totally worth trying.

Yes, you have to actually work to succeed, yet most people assume it is get rich quick. That is where (in my experience) the bulk of the 95% fail when it comes to AdSense, affiliate marketing, Kindle books or any of the other online businesses. Yes, the throw up some crap, do nothing and expect to make money days have long since sailed. Think of this as a "bakery" type business, try to provide a good product, do a little planning and research, market yourself and just a smidge of luck. That 95 vs 5 becomes more like the 50-50 chances you see if the brick and mortar world of actualy non-scheme businesses.

Kind of reminds me of the coffee shop that just opened up the street from me. I already know it will fail because they don't open till 10AM. Most coffee shops do the bulk of their business before that but the owner likely thought "I don't want to get up that early". But I am sure when they fail, they will decry the business model to all they know as not being viable when in fact they just did not want to put the work required to succeed in the business.

[LifeinAsia]

It is true the top 5% do pretty fair

And I think it's safe to say that the top 5% (or whatever percent you want to use) don't have thin sites with minimal traffic. With very few exceptions, most of them have probably been developing their sites for years.

Edit: changed to don't have thin sites

[edited by: LifeinAsia at 4:22 pm (utc) on Jun 19, 2014]

[netmeg]

Wait... what?

[hannamyluv]

Wait... what?

I think he meant the bottom 95%...

[LifeinAsia]

Wait... what?

I mean't to include "don't" as in "don't post anything until you've had your morning coffee..."

[webcentric]

I mean't to include "don't" as in "don't post anything until you've had your morning coffee..."

One of the downsides to living where local coffee shops don't open before 10am ;)

@hannamyluv -- yup, this has become game for people with a business mindset and strong work ethic. Some are probably still getting by with the same old "publish it and forget it" model but I think they are becoming less prevalent than they used to be.

[IanCP]

@Ember

I don't consider an article an article unless it has at least 500 words

Absolutely a minimum

[webcentric]

I don't consider an article an article unless it has at least 500 words

Absolutely a minimum

I know you're discussing "articles" here but but I'd like to emphasize that not every content page needs to be an article. Product descriptions are a good example. They're better when they're in-depth but I wouldn't call them "articles."

Content comes in many forms, shapes and sizes and I tend to view it not by word count but by its level of completeness or breadth. A page with a few images in combination with short snippets of descriptive text and a few well-considered links (internal and external) can offer a fantastic target for a search engine. I have one page in particular (actually its one of a number that enjoy the following status) that has 4 images (each with a descriptive heading and about 300 additional words on the page describing the images and filling in the subject matter of the page. Additionally there are several links to related topics on my site and one link to a local authority on the subject. This particular page ranks #1 in Google, Yahoo and Bing and has done so for years (well, Yahoo just got with the program this year). It outranks every local website that addresses this particular topic.

So, I understand blogging is largely about the written word (and I don't consider myself a blogger by any stretch of the imagination) but volume is not the only consideration when it comes to content sufficiency.

And one last note. I recently had to create a new Adsense account due to a business merger and name change. I opened that account with a website that had exactly two articles on it plus a home page, a contact page, terms of service page and a privacy policy page. So, number of articles, size of articles, hmmmm? Maybe it's more about overall quality of content, originality, etc. than something as meaningless as number of articles or the word-count of those articles.

The volume of words on a page isn't necessarily related to the quality of the message on the page.

[hannamyluv]

The volume of words on a page isn't necessarily related to the quality of the message on the page.

I was thinking about this earlier in regards to the OP question. There are many micro sites that have 10 pages and all great content. And there are sites with 1M pages with nothing but fluff.

My rule of thumb is silly, but it works for me. Sufficient content / good content means you have a site you would be proud to show your mother*. Something that she would recommend to her friends to check out (likely in all caps, but that is another topic).

If your mom would not be proud of it, you need to do some work on your content.

*and for the record, my mom writes paranormal erotica for a living so my definition of what makes mom proud is really very broad.

[webcentric]

LOL -- My mom might have read some of your mom's stuff. She was in that same broad definition of a good measuring stick too (when she was with us). RIP Mother

[netmeg]

(Ha! My 83 year old mother writes content for me)

As I said before - *useful* is the new black. You can get away with almost anything if you're really useful.

[hannamyluv]

My 83 year old mother writes content for me

Hehe! so did my mom, up until she made her own money on her own stuff. My editor and I were very sad when she found her "niche" and did not write for us anymore. She is an awesome writer.

Makes one wonder what gems were lost to a lack of exposure in previous generations.

[denisl]

So, number of articles, size of articles, hmmmm? Maybe it's more about overall quality of content, originality, etc. than something as meaningless as number of articles or the word-count of those articles.

Agreed. And as the OP was talking about a reasonable number of articles, but each consisting of 1 paragraph, I wonder if G identified a patern.
This patern looks like someone simply try to create something to show G ads rather than something useful (even if this is not the case here).

[cbpayne]

"insufficient content" from Google Adsense also means "insufficient useful content" - over at Google adsense help group, a lot of sites have been posting about being rejected for "insufficient content" but had a substantial amount of content, but when checking, the content sucked and was poorly written

[Rosalind]

I have now 30 articles or something on my website with photo's and videos and 1 paragraph of text on each article.

Whose photos? If you didn't take the photos or didn't put your website's watermark on them, the people checking your site out will assume you're just duplicating content found elsewhere on the web, so it won't count towards your ratio of sufficient content. The same goes for videos, which most likely are hosted elsewhere and count as some other site's content.

As much as possible, take your own photos and watermark them.

[tangor]

I really believe that "insufficient content" these days means "you weren't the first, the best, or even second, you're just another derivative and, perhaps not even that good."

With the number of folks going after the SAME THING (niche, product, ads, etc) and that number is INCREASING every month, the bar for "sufficient content" has gradually been raised and this situation will only get worse.

That said, as we always say and we all deep down believe, if you do it better than the others (content, quality, presentation, user-experience...) you'll rise to the top. If you don't believe that then John Wayne has a thought for you:

"Life is tough,
It's even tougher
If you are stupid."

Which to me means make smart decisions, take affirmative action, do what you know is right. I truly think all of us know what "thin or insufficient" content is and no amount of chatting about that will change the facts that some content truly is thin and insufficient AS FAR AS THE USER EXPERIENCE THAT GOOGLE HAS DEFINED.

[netmeg]

To paraphrase a famous quote, when it comes to sufficient content, I know it when I don't see it.

[webcentric]

Hmmm. There's an idea for original content. Since the quote website landscape is saturated, perhaps it's time for a site containing whimsical paraphrases and/or variants of well known quotes to emerge...

to be is what I want to be and that is not a question...