Does Site Size Influence Rank?
-
The Scenario:
Currently one of my clients has 7-8 products that they sell on their website. For each product they have two different pages one with the product info and one with a video demo. So the pages began to split their authority as they began receiving new links. Since only one of the two pages for each product rank i suggested that we combine the two and redirect the video page to the product page to increases it's authority and rank.The Clients Response:
After explaining my reasoning and next steps the client mentioned that he thought a site's size was a ranking factor. I had never heard of this before so i told them i would do some research to prove my point, after a little digging around i am now even more confused.- http://www.seroundtable.com/google-size-ranking-17044.html
- http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4591155.htm
The Question:
Does a websites size/amount of content indexed in Google actually effect your sites ability to rank?I look forward to everyones feedback, thanks
- Kyle
-
Sounds like a very well reasoned response. Thanks for the follow up!
-
Thanks for the input Cyrus!
If your interested, here is what ended up happening:
It turned out that my colleague, the person who was pressuring me to find the research, had read some hubspot powerpoints that talked about the size of your website and how much inbound traffic you can receive, rather than the size of your website being a ranking factor. So this was my response back:It sounds like we are both trying to answer a slightly different question. I was looking for “Does a site’s size determine its ability to rank in search engines". You were looking for “Does a site’s size effect the amount of traffic it receives”
While they both seem very similar they are quite different. In regards to a site’s size being a ranking factor I would disagree. A site’s ability to rank for a given term is based on its external linking factors, social mentions and on-page targeting. This is why even smaller websites and companies can be competitive for individual keyword terms. However I would completely agree that a site’s size does give you a better opportunity to gain more overall traffic because there is more content to be indexed in search engines and shared across social networks, blogs, directories, etc..
In the end they decided to take the suggestion and combine the product and demo pages to help increase their page's authority and in turn its ranking position.
-
I'm unaware of any study that shows increased website size has a positive effect on rankings. Lot's of spam sites have over 1,000,000 pages, in the vain attempt to rank for anything, but it doesn't seem to help them. That said, there are some secondary consideration that size brings with it.
For example, large sites may have indexation problems if they don't have enough PageRank/Authority for a full crawl.
Conversely, large site will often contain more content, thereby presenting more ranking opportunities.
I can't tell you for certain that redirecting the pages will help you, or hurt you for that matter. In the end you should make the decision based on what's best for user experience. But one thing I'm fairly certain of is that there's little chance that site size is a ranking factor.
-
Thanks for all the feedback guys!
It still just sounds more like a correlation rather than causation. The idea that often larger sites are doing the right activities to get higher ranks (branding, cross channel marketing, RCS, etc.) rather than the fact that they just have a large site.
I really wish that there was some more definitive research out there other than just gut feelings.
- Kyle
-
I believe it probably does (although probably not a significant amount). As the size of a site increases (with unique content), it may be easier to gain trust and authority. However, quality of content/inbounds links still would heavily drive rankings.
-
Yes, to put it simply.
The company I work for has several new clients and over the last few months what I've noticed is that the two biggest ones (with more than 10,000 & 15,000+ products each) have exploded in popularity, attracting over 20,000 visitors in the last month since their sites went live at the start of the year. These clients are finding it an absolute doddle to reach the top 5/10 fairly fast.
This is compared to almost a dozen clients who have less than 150 products each and who are still struggling to reach 10% of the popularity of the newest ones, even after a year or more of being online. These clients seem to take 6 months or more to rank for even simple keywords.Another thing I've noticed is that we have one client who restocks only once a year - as their stock levels go down and product pages are taken offline, progressively so does the traffic go down and their rankings slip.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
About porn sites and ranking
Hello, I'm thinking to extend my website into porn. At the moment there is no pornography on it, although we do talk about sex related topics and products (from dating to tutorials, to toys etc.) Would it be dangerous to keep the porn section on the same domain as the rest? Would this negatively affect my non-porn content as Googlebot would "flag" my website as being pornographic (although only a few pages would be)? Or simply Googlebot would leave the current non-porn pages ranking as they are now, just fine, and plus it would rank the porn pages if they "deserve" to? I hope my question is clear. I don't want to create a subdomain.
Algorithm Updates | | fabx0 -
Delay between being indexed and ranking for new pages.
I've noticed with the last few pages i've built that there's a delay between them being indexed and them actually ranking. Anyone else finding that? And why is it like that? Not much of an issue as they tend to pop up after a week or so, but I am curious. Isaac.
Algorithm Updates | | isaac6630 -
Not a mobile friendly website, will it hurt my rankings?
Unfortunately my website is not mobile friendly. As it is based on clickable links within an image there is no way to adapt it either. Now, I have heard Google is getting serious about mobile friendly design, how will this impact my ratings? My current analytics show 57% desktop, 24% mobile and 19% tablet. I really like the design of my site with the clickable images and would hate to have to change it because Google says so :-(. My website is http://tamarindobeachinfo.com
Algorithm Updates | | ijb0 -
Https slower site Versus Non https faster site??
Hey all, I know that everyone is going on about https as a ranking signal (as far as I read it is not a very important ranking signal, but a low ranking signal) but Site speed is a ranking signal https is now a ranking signal as well https makes sites slower So in view of the above, what's better? An https site that is slower A non https site that is faster Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | bjs20100 -
Does it impact over ranking of any website if their same content being used some other external sources
Hi Moz & members, I just want to make sure over website www.1st-care.org , does it impact over ranking this website if the same content (of about us or home care services) being used some other external sources or local citations places. Do those published same content create any ranking drop issue with this website's and making its content strengthen week? . As I was on 9th position in Google.com before, now it has slipped to 29th position. WHY? is there content issue or anything else which i am not aware.
Algorithm Updates | | Futura
See the content used:
Home page content
About us page content Regards,
Teginder Ravi0 -
6 year old Corporate domain lost all rankings on EMD day.
Hello, our company's website goo.gl/7Q56G lost all our rankings after the EMD algo update. Our domain is NOT a EMD. At the same time, I found that we have about 6000 new, extremely low quality spam backlinks with the same anchor text ("loan"). I saw some of those a few weeks ago, but didn't really pay much attention because I didn't believe Google would think we build those. I didn't get any messages on webmaster central. If this occurred with the EMD update, is it because of the low quality backlinks? Most of the real spammers, brokers (we are the actual funding source) are now dominating the top 10 for our main keyword "merchant cash advance". We were in the top 10 for the past 4 years, why would we get hit so hard now? I really appreciate your advice.
Algorithm Updates | | DaveMri1 -
What are the good strategies using satellite sites in SEO??
Hello to everybody, We'are thinking about launching a massive amount of satellite websites in order to promote our website. Is it really efficient in terms of link building? Or is the ROI really small due to the amount of time and money needed to create and manage these websites? Thanks a lot!!! Update: Thanks to all of you for all these interesting answers!
Algorithm Updates | | sarenausa1 -
Ranking #1 for Local, Not for National
A client with both a web and brick and mortar store is ranking well for normal web searches locally for many terms but less so nationally. I'm aware that results change due to location and other factors. Specifically, client is wondering if his retail location and corresponding places page are hurting his web results in non-local areas.
Algorithm Updates | | AliveWired0