Google’s head of search engine spam, Matt Cutts, released another video, this time on the topic of adding pages to a site, and its affect on search rankings. The common thought with many marketers is that if you simply fill a site with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of pages, you’ll rank well with Google. According to Cutts, that is not necessarily the case.
He said, “I wouldn’t assume that just because you have a large number of indexed pages that you automatically get a high-ranking. That’s not the case.” He went on to clarify that the more pages you have, the more chances there are for you to rank. Additional keywords, for example, may be found and ranked for. The more indexed pages, the more opportunities you’ll have to show up, but that does not automatically improve your search rankings.
Sites with lots of pages will often have more links and higher PageRank, he said, which would impact the search results. The bottom line is, as Google has been saying for years, the main thing anyone can do to improve their site is to focus on the user experience. Adding content that a user finds valuable will, over time, help with rankings. If you’re adding thousands of low-quality pages that visitors don’t read, it could actually hurt the search ranking.
