Google’s Matt Cutts regularly publishes video content to YouTube to answer questions about Google’s algorithms and the company’s SEO guidelines, and he’s ready to talk shop with marketers. In Cutts’ recent upload, a fellow Googler, John Mueller, asked, “Should I add an archive of hundreds of thousands of pages [to my site] at once or in stages?”
Businesses currently migrating content archives or building out new sections of their websites will be interested to know how Google handles a volume of new content. In some cases, an organization may switch domain names and want to convert all previously uploaded web content to the new site, or maybe they have offline assets they’re converting to digital content. To avoid the wrath of Google, site owners should pay close attention to Cutts’ advice, especially if they have any question about quality standards across the content.
Cutts suggested that Google can handle and index even high volumes of digital content immediately, but if a site uploads thousands of pages overnight, the action may catch Google’s attention and lead to a manual review by the company’s spam team. He suggests uploading content in stages to avoid raising red flags for Google, especially because businesses uploading thousands of pieces in a day likely don’t have all unique articles, though he admits it’s not impossible.
At last month’s SMX West, Matt Cutts noted that SEO is about giving site visitors the best possible user experience. He also noted that Panda updates will be ongoing and deploying gradually, so a site that uploads a bunch of content at once may grab Panda’s attention almost immediately. Therefore, it’s advised to give Google (and users) a chance to gradually get accustomed to site content, and only upload a high volume of content if confident that each piece will pass Google’s strict guidelines.
