What is Thin Content and How to Fix Low Quality PagesHow to recover from Google Panda and Helpful Content updates and Adsense quality policy violations after being hit with thin content.
When the Helpful Content update hit in late 2022, I noticed a gradual decrease in visits. Week-on-week and month-on-month traffic was down. Google's release notes state that "due to algorithm changes, you may notice changes. Don't worry; nothing is broken, no need to fix anything." A few weeks later, I started receiving the dreaded "You need to fix some issues before your site is ready for AdSense" messages from AdSense. On investigation, the issue is "Thin content."
My sites have been running well since 2003 in one form or another. I started with one site, and as the content grew, I split it into smaller, more focused niche sites. They have been going well and running steadily for years. Yet, when Google released the Helpful Content Update in late 2022, I noticed a significant drop in traffic across all sites. Similar Google Panda updates had no noticeable effect on traffic, but this helpful content update has hammered my rankings.
As of this writing, I have lost 85% of my traffic. I'm getting AdSense policy violations for thin content, as my overall site traffic is nose-diving.
What is thin content? What is quality content? How do you define value? Is there a specific word count you must hit or a set of guidelines you must reach? What does Google want from me?
What is Thin Content?
Thin content refers to pages on your website with little value for your audience. This can include pages with very little text, duplicate content, or content that needs to be more specific to your website's overall theme. Google's algorithm penalises websites with thin content, so it is important to ensure that your website provides valuable information to your audience.
Google's policy documentation defines thin content as pages with little or no value to the user, like doorway pages, low-quality affiliate pages, or pages with very little or no content. The Google Helpful Content Update release notes state, "The system automatically identifies content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to people."
Are Short Pages with Low Word Count Considered Thin Content?
Those definitions are vague, generic, subjective, and only help a little. How do you define and measure thin or low-value content? I have no doorway pages or affiliate pages, so is thin content then based on word count? On my six sites, ~84% of articles are over 800 words, and 93% are over 600. The remainder is gallery pages (photo-heavy) or simple contact, directions, and sitemap-type pages, which are not indexed nor serve AdSense content.
Content length is not to blame, especially since one of my highest-ranking pages is <200 words and has a high bounce rate. It answers a question in which the user can copy/paste the solution into their app and never return to my page. That at least indicates what being [italic]helpful[/italic] is about. [underline]Pages should provide visitors with an answer to their search[/underline]. A 200-word article that gets to the point and provides the required information is better than a 1000-word article full of waffle and spun content to pad the text.
AI Generated Content is Thin Content
I can further refine my definition of thin content by reading about similar issues and the Google Helpful Content Update. It seems like AI-generated content is considered thin and likely to be not indexed or satisfy AdSense policy. Still, my site has no AI-generated, scripted, spun, automatic, or scraped content. I wrote every article myself. While this may not be the case for me, for others using AI content, it may be a good idea to go back and remove or rewrite it.
Poor Spelling and Grammar is Thin Content
Copy quality should also be good. I use Grammarly for spelling and grammar checking; my site has a bunch of on-page SEO criteria for each page, including title length, keyword density for target phrase, content length, readability, broken link checker, content is not duplicated. I write all my content for the user, not the search engine. Content is specific to the site topic. I don't believe that is the problem.
Unprofessional Website Template / Theme / Logo Can Have Little Value
Some forum users report that the website template/theme can look unprofessional or having a poor-quality logo can affect AdSense approval. I believe my sites look good, have relevant categories and structure, decent logos, pages structured with appropriate headings and paragraphs, and clear and straightforward navigation. This is not the reason, but please let me know if there are issues with my site!
Show Expertise in Your Field
Writing about my expertise, specialities, or experience is a relevant ranking factor, at least for the helpful content update. I don't know how to indicate expertise to Google, but they gather so much information about us. Google probably already knows I'm a professional software engineer and web developer with 20 years of experience and a self-employed photographer with diplomas in astronomy, computer science and neuro-linguistic programming. Articles should be written in a way that involves me sharing my knowledge and experience and demonstrating the usage of tools or equipment, rather than a generic page about something unrelated to my site that anyone can copy & paste from Wikipedia. The secret is to make it personal.
How I Fixed My Thin Content
So, what does Google want from me? How can I regain my lost visitors and AdSense approval?
I started by going through every page on each website one by one, pruning or refreshing all old content. I merged several similar pages, added suitable redirects to new pages, and interlinked pages and sites when beneficial to the user. I ran every page through Grammarly to check for spelling and grammar mistakes. Although I do this while writing, I must have either skipped some pages or made some edits without, as there were typos and poor grammar to be fixed.
I looked at my pages, which had less than 300 words and very few (or no) visits. I merged some of these into larger pages or included them as a new heading in existing pages. Others were so old and outdated that I deleted them (who wants Windows 98 tips these days?). I put redirects in place for each page removed. I added more images, videos, infographics, and interactive elements to articles to make my content more engaging, which also breaks up long blocks of text and makes it easier for readers to consume.
I decided to de-index my gallery pages since they have few words besides image captions. I don't consider them key content I want to drive visitors to, and galleries are linked to content if a visitor wants to see my photos. I also added a noindex to category pages as these are not helpful indexing; they can be classified as duplicate content since they repeat the article excerpts and headings.
I also took a good look at the comments on the pages. I wonder if Google sees comments separately from page content or considers the page as a whole. Still, some comments have a lot of spelling and grammar errors; others have little to no value - "nice article!" type of comment. I corrected terrible spelling and grammar and removed poor-quality comments that added nothing to the user's experience. This is a sensible thing to do to improve the overall page quality and ensure that any content is valued.
After a few weeks, I submitted my sites for review again in AdSense and regained approval. I also noticed an increase in visitors, which was nowhere near where it was before the updates, but the graph is trending upwards. Fingers crossed, my experience with thin content can help others in a similar situation recover from penalties and AdSense policy violations.
How To Fix Thin Content in a Nutshell
In summary, to recover from AdSense policy violation for thin content or from the helpful content update, you need to:
- Provide more content, but fewer pages. Prune short pages or merge them into larger ones.
- Content needs to be high quality, unique and provide a positive experience for the user.
- Avoid scraping, spinning, and AI-generated content.
- The content must be consistent with the website's theme; for example, on my photography site, I'm not going to write about weight training because it is irrelevant to people visiting a photography website.
- Content must be updated and refreshed regularly or removed when it becomes obsolete.
- Check and double-check your content for spelling and grammar errors.
- Use
noindexon content that has little value but you want to keep. - Take a critical look at your site theme and logo; redesign if it is cluttered, has errors or doesn't flow well.
- Write about what you know; don't write about subjects you have no knowledge or experience in, as you will just be scraping other sites' content.
- Consider page comments as content and apply the same rules. Only approve comments after reading, checking or correcting.
