Google, the 23 questions to build quality sites.
It’s been several years now since in May 2011, an article intended to “make history” appeared on Google’s official blog for webmasters: the web world was in the midst of the effects of the Panda algorithm update, which completely changed the rules of the game for SEO, especially in the area of link building, and advice was needed to achieve the quality goals that Google wanted to find in the sites.
Amit Singhal’s 23 questions after Google Panda
The compass arrived thanks to Amit Singhal, at the time a Google Fellow and head of Google’s search team (and later Google’s senior vice president), who wrote an article in which he provided 23 questions that could guide a person towards the pursuit of quality, later known as “23 questions for Panda“, which are still useful and valid today, as recently confirmed by Googlers in some exchanges on Twitter after the June 2019 update, to target the creation of good content (the first step towards ranking, as also reminded Martin Splitt).
The Panda algorithm and site quality
Singhal’s article opens with a clarification of Google’s Panda update, an update to the search engine’s algorithm that “improved the rankings of many high-quality websites,” but inevitably penalized other areas and raised doubts about how Google searches for and evaluates high-quality sites (a problem that, upon closer inspection, remains the same to this day!)
Quality also means a better user experience
The Googler’s first piece of advice to publishers is to provide the best possible user experience on their websites, without focusing too much on “what they think are Google’s current algorithms or ranking factors.”
That’s because (in 2011 as today) search (the search system) “is a complicated and evolving art and science”: rather than focusing on specific algorithmic tweaks, it would be better to focus on providing the best possible user experience.
How do we recognize a quality site?
We know that Google’s algorithms help users find “high-quality” sites by reducing the ranking of low-quality content, but here’s the million-dollar question (in an almost literal sense, you might say…): how do you actually create a quality site, and what is necessary and important to achieve it?
Questions to assess the quality of homepage content
To guide everyone involved in online activities – including SEO professionals who often have to take cover and rethink their strategies in the wake of sudden collapses – Amit Singhal has developed a series of 23 questions that can be used to assess the quality of a page or article.
As explained, these are the types of questions that Google’s team asks when working on algorithms that attempt to assess site quality, and represent how to “code what we think our users want.”
In more detail, the post doesn’t offer any official indication of the ranking factors used in Google’s algorithms (though over time many have become “public”), as “we don’t want people to change our search results,” but it does provide some clarity on how Google has been looking at the issue and a useful vade mecum to keep in mind to understand if the path taken is the right one.
The 23 questions to evaluate the quality of a site and a page for Google.
- Would you trust the information in the article?
- Was the content written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the subject matter well, or is it more superficial in nature?
- Does the site contain duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics, with only slight variations in keywords?
- Would you trust this site with your credit card details?
- Does the content contain errors in spelling, style, or fact?
- Is the goal of the articles to reach the true interest of the site’s readers or is the site just generating content by guessing what would rank well in the search engines?
- Does the article provide original content? Is the information, studies, research, and analysis original?
- Does the page provide substantial value compared to other pages that appear in search results?
- How much quality control is there on the content?
- Does the article present both sides of a story?
- Is the site a recognized authority in its field?
- Is the content mass-produced or outsourced by a large number of creators or spread across a vast network of sites, so that individual pages or sites do not receive the same attention and care?
- Is the article well-written or does it seem hastily and crudely produced?
- For a health-related issue: would you trust the information provided by this site?
- Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when its brand is mentioned?
- Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does this article contain in-depth analysis or interesting information that goes beyond the obvious?
- Is it a type of page you could bookmark, share with a friend or recommend?
- Does the article contain an excessive amount of ads that distract or interfere with the main content?
- Does it resemble an article that might be published in a print magazine, encyclopedia, or book?
- Are the articles short, sparse, or lacking in useful detail?
- Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail or without these characteristics?
- Would users complain when they see the pages on this site?
Questions that are still relevant to creating quality sites for Google.
As can be seen, despite being eight years old, Amit Singhal’s questions are still very modern and even anticipated some of Google’s directions, as in the case of authority, trust, and reliability of the site and authors, which later merged with the EAT paradigm and Google’s quality reviewer guidelines, or attention to health (one of the YMYL topics) and the presence of annoying ads (such as modern interstitials that are a problem for mobile sites).
You may also want to read the following recommended articles:
- 3 Important Characteristics An Article Must Have
- How To Write An SEO-Friendly Article
- How To Rank On Google: 3 Tips
- Make Money With An Article By Updating It
- How To Create A Website: Complete Guide For Beginners
A compass to evaluate the quality of the site’s content
These 23 questions are a useful guide to evaluate the quality of a site and its pages in the eyes of Google and readers because they allow us to better understand how real users perceive and experience a site, and what they think of the content they find there. In short, it is an important reference to know to understand if the path taken is the right one and, even more concretely, to understand in which aspects of the site it is necessary to intervene to modify or improve the proposal and achieve quality (and therefore a better and updated positioning by the algorithms).