TapTechNews July 18th news, the tech blog vincentschmalbach posted a blog on July 15th, stating that Google now no longer indexes website content by default and instead seeks more selective inclusion.
If it was 10 years ago, when you just opened a new WordPress blog, within a few hours (or maybe even just a few minutes), your content would be indexed by Google.
For content creators, Google search expands the audience, and for netizens, they can find more relevant content through Google search.
Google is fulfilling its mission of organizing the world's information and making it accessible to people all over the world. This is a golden age for content creators: as long as you create content, Google will ensure it can be found.
In the case of the explosive development of web pages, the profession of search engine optimization (SEO) also emerged, and various problems also occurred:
Low-quality content flooding the network
Link buying and selling
A large amount of gray and black search engine optimization content
Google has launched a series of algorithm updates, each one more complex than the previous one. Panda, Penguin and their subsequent versions are aimed at cleaning up the manipulative search engine optimization practices in Google's eyes.
So Google continuously optimizes the search engine algorithm, and SEO and other people with malicious intentions also continuously upgrade their operations. Both sides are constantly adjusting. Google continuously推出 updates, and search engine optimizers also continuously find new methods to optimize within (and sometimes even outside) the guidelines.
In the continuous battle between search engine optimizers and Google, a new slogan emerged in the industry: 'Content is king'. This concept has two main aspects:
Good content will naturally attract links and may generate positive user interaction signals, thereby improving the ranking.
Google's algorithm essentially values high-quality content and ranks it.
The idea is that by focusing on creating excellent content, websites can improve their search engine optimization without resorting to more technical or potentially manipulative strategies.
However, this concept has never been completely correct. Many truly excellent content creators have never obtained the rankings they think they deserve, indicating that quality alone is not enough. At the same time, this is not completely wrong - good content often performs well in search results.
One of the fundamental problems is that Google or anyone else cannot determine 'good' content through an algorithm.
Fast forward to 2018. OpenAI released GPT-1, and the future of content creation suddenly became clear. AI-generated content is no different from human-written text, and it is coming soon. The era of 'content is king' is coming to an end.
Now, put yourself in Google's shoes. In the future, AI can generate an unlimited amount of human-like content. What would you do?
Promote the vague concept of E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness). In practice, this is to favor well-known brands and established websites.
Abandon the mission of indexing everything. Instead, be selective. Very selective.
This is the current situation: Google no longer tries to index the entire web. In fact, it has become extremely picky and refuses to index most content.
Google now seems to be operating on a 'default no-index' basis. Only when it deems there is a real need will it include content in the index.
TapTechNews attaches the following relevant factors:
Extremely unique content: Just writing some content that is not widely reported is not enough. Google seems to require that the content must be truly novel or fill a significant gap in its index.
Cognitive authority: Websites that Google considers to have a high degree of authority in their niches may have more content indexed, but even so, it is not guaranteed.
Brand awareness: Most of the content of well-known brands is usually indexed, while small or unknown bloggers face stricter selectivity.
Temporary indexing and de-indexing: In practice, Google usually indexes new content quickly, which may be to avoid missing breaking news or important updates. Shortly after, Google may de-index the content, and the content remains de-indexed since then. Therefore, being initially indexed does not necessarily mean Google thinks your content is valuable.