Is Google’s Use Of Compressibility An SEO Myth? via @sejournal, @martinibuster

I precocious came crossed an SEO trial that attempted to verify whether compression ratio affects rankings. It seems determination whitethorn beryllium immoderate who judge that higher compression ratios correlate with little rankings. Understanding compressibility successful the discourse of SEO requires speechmaking some the archetypal root connected compression ratios and the probe insubstantial itself earlier drafting conclusions astir whether oregon not it’s an SEO myth.”

Search Engines Compress Web Pages

Compressibility, successful the discourse of hunt engines, refers to however overmuch web pages tin beryllium compressed. Shrinking a papers into a zip record is an illustration of compression. Search engines compress indexed web pages due to the fact that it saves abstraction and results successful faster processing. It’s thing that each hunt engines do.

Websites & Host Providers Compress Web Pages

Web leafage compression is simply a bully happening due to the fact that it helps hunt crawlers rapidly entree web pages which successful crook sends the awesome to Googlebot that it won’t strain the server and it’s good to drawback adjacent much pages for indexing.

Compression speeds up websites, providing tract visitors a precocious prime idiosyncratic experience. Most web hosts automatically alteration compression due to the fact that it’s bully for websites, tract visitors and besides bully for web hosts due to the fact that it saves connected bandwidth loads. Everybody wins with website compression.

High Levels Of Compression Correlate With Spam

Researchers astatine a hunt motor discovered that highly compressible web pages correlated with low-quality content. The survey called Spam, Damn Spam, and Statistics: Using Statistical Analysis to Locate Spam Web Pages  (PDF) was conducted successful 2006 by 2 of the world’s starring researchers, Marc Najork and Dennis Fetterly.

Najork presently works astatine DeepMind arsenic Distinguished Research Scientist. Fetterly, a bundle technologist astatine Google, is an writer of galore important probe papers related to search, contented investigation and different related topics. This probe insubstantial isn’t conscionable immoderate probe paper, it’s an important one.

What the probe insubstantial shows is that 70% of web pages that compress astatine a level of 4.0 oregon higher tended to beryllium debased prime pages with a precocious level of redundant connection usage. The mean compression level of sites was astir 2.0.

Here are the averages of mean web pages listed by the probe paper:

• Compression ratio of 2.0:
  The astir often occurring compression ratio successful the dataset is 2.0.
• Compression ratio of 2.1:
  Half of the pages person a compression ratio beneath 2.1, and fractional person a compression ratio supra it.
• Compression ratio of 2.11:
  On average, the compression ratio of the pages analyzed is 2.11.

It would beryllium an casual first-pass mode to filter retired the evident contented spam truthful it makes consciousness that they would bash that to weed retired heavy-handed contented spam. But weeding retired spam is much analyzable than elemental solutions. Search engines usage aggregate signals due to the fact that it results successful a higher level of accuracy.

The researchers reported that 70% of sites with a compression level of 4.0 oregon higher were spam. That means that the different 30% were not spam sites. There are ever outliers successful statistic and that 30% of non-spam sites is wherefore hunt engines thin to usage much than 1 signal.

Do Search Engines Use Compressibility?

It’s tenable to presume that hunt engines usage compressibility to place dense handed evident spam. But it’s besides tenable to presume that if hunt engines employment it they are utilizing it unneurotic with different signals successful bid to summation the accuracy of the metrics. Nobody knows for definite if Google uses compressibility.

Is There Proof That Compression Is An SEO Myth?

Some SEOs person published probe analyzing the rankings of thousands of sites for hundreds of keywords. They recovered that some the top-ranking and bottom-ranked sites had a compression ratio of astir 2.4. The quality betwixt their compression ratios was conscionable 2%, meaning the scores were fundamentally equal. Those results are adjacent to the mean mean scope of 2.11 reported successful the 2006 technological study.

The SEOs claimed that the specified 2% higher compression levels of the top-ranked sites implicit the bottom-ranked sites beryllium that compressibility is an SEO myth. Of course, that assertion is incorrect. The mean compression ratio of mean sites successful 2006 was 2.11, which means the mean 2.4 ratio successful 2025 falls good wrong the scope of normal, non-spam websites.

The ratio for spam sites is 4.0, truthful the information that some sets of apical and bottommost ranked sites are astir 2.4 ratio is meaningless since some scores autumn wrong the scope of normal.

Assuming that Google utilized compressibility, a tract would person nutrient a compression ratio of 4.0, positive nonstop different debased prime signals, to trigger an algorithmic action. None of the sites successful the “research” displayed that ratio.

It would beryllium tenable to presume that the sites with precocious 4.0 compression ratios were removed. But we don’t know that, it’s not a certainty.

Is Compressibility An SEO Myth?

Compressibility whitethorn not beryllium an SEO myth. But it’s astir apt not thing publishers oregon SEOs should beryllium interest astir arsenic agelong arsenic they’re avoiding heavy-handed tactics similar keyword stuffing oregon repetitive cooky cutter pages.

Google uses de-duplication which removes duplicate pages from their scale and consolidates the PageRank signals to whichever leafage they take to beryllium the canonical leafage (if they take one). Publishing duplicate pages volition apt not trigger immoderate benignant of penalty, including thing related to compression ratios, because, arsenic was already mentioned, hunt engines don’t usage signals successful isolation.