The Google Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, posted another PSA last week on Twitter, saying word count is not a thing again. He said, “Reminder. The best word count needed to succeed in Google Search is … not a thing! It doesn’t exist. Write as long or short as needed for people who read your content. That’s aligned with what our ranking systems aim to reward.”
This is not new, he quoted himself from the helpful content documentation with this screenshot.
Reminder. The best word count needed to succeed in Google Search is … not a thing! It doesn’t exist. Write as long or short as needed for people who read your content. That’s aligned with what our ranking systems aim to reward: #PeopleNotRobots pic.twitter.com/wdjhHn9RR3
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 22, 2023
Then John Mueller responded to a question from an SEO who wrote, “So why a direct correlation between word count and outranking competition?” John responded saying, “Are you saying the top ranking pages should have the most words? That’s definitely not the case.”
Are you saying the top ranking pages should have the most words? That’s definitely not the case.
— John Mueller (official) · #StaplerLife (@JohnMu) June 23, 2023
This topic of word count and Google SEO is something I covered here countless times. Google said in 2022 word count is not sign of unhelp content. In 2019, John said word count is not a ranking factor and in 2018 John said word count is not indicative of quality. Google won’t penalize you for short articles and Google said short articles can rank well and then again in 2014 said short articles are not low quality. Google has been recently saying to avoid fluff leading some to believe Google may not rank fluff well in the future.
So there you have it again, from Google.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
