Content 'metrics'

Number of pages may not be a reliable meaure.

[Wonderstuff]

Often there are posts on all sorts of topics that include comments like '. . . and my site has 10,000 pages' or 'I've bought 5,000 pages of content' etc.

My point is, how reliable is number of pages in terms of content? It can't mean much.

So for example, I've just published 10 new pages with an average of 600 words on each page, focused on keywords that relate to my site's topic.

So an 'index' could be the number of pages X words on each page = 10 X 600 = an index of 6000.

So, 100 pages of only 50 words, would give a lower index of 5000.

Very simplistic, yes. Is it a better metric than just number of pages?

Over to you.

[BertieB]

You make a good point -- X number of pages doesn't necessarily mean anything. A half-dozen page minisite can outperform a site with several thousand pages for sure.

But the total number of words isn't necessarily a good thing either. Wordiness is normally not a good thing on the web. Therefore a 10pg x 600wd site may beat a 100pg x 50wd site... but it may not. Is 6000 really better than 5000? Would someone sit through a 7000 word page?

I think it boils down to big/many!= quality. Present the information (or product) you have well written enough to grab the reader's attention span -- and as concisely as possible to keep it. Like you say, if the 600 word page is focused on keywords and the topic at hand, then they will likely outperform pages with only 50 words.

Of course, writing/generating an order of several thousand pages makes some people happy, which is why they say "My site has x000 pages!" or "I wrote a 3000 word article for my site!". If it works for them, that's good enough :)

As far as metrics are concerned, reading back what I've written seems to say the numbers may not mean a lot; or at least for given metrics, there is a domain of optimum values.

Or maybe I'll say "websites are hard to comapre" and leave it at that :)