In John’s hangout on 09/10/2021, one webmaster was concerned regarding quote-based sites or what he called quote-based.
He wanted to know why Google is constantly ranking three sites that have all the same content above theirs in the SERPs (search engine results pages). He also asked why Google treats quote-based sites differently than sites with lots of information.
John explained that if he wants his site to rank, he needs to have significantly unique content—unique in site structure or so unique Google just has to rank the site.
Quotes are a very competitive website niche. So just having quotes from others on the site, without any other content, makes for a very hard time ranking unless you have a unique selling point.
John explained that if the webmaster would like to stand out, they must do something different rather than exactly the same thing that everyone else is doing.
This discussion occurs at the 0:36 mark in the video.
You can watch the video below:
John Mueller 09/10/2021 Hangout Transcript
I have a question related to a website, like a quote-based website. Okay. So my question is why quote-based website rank, like faster as compared to any other website, is still they are using the same content? They are using similar content if you are searching like, like, Christmas-based quotes or New Year quotes. So what you find is that each and every website has the same content, but still, they are ranking on the top of you. So why?
John 1:12
What kind of website did you say that you are?
Webmaster 1 1:15
Quote-based…quotes like the New Year quotes, like December 25, December-based quotes…quote-based?
John 1:26
I don’t understand what you mean with quote based.
Webmaster 1 1:30
Like if suppose you are searching for like someone is searching for life…based on some related to their lifestyle-based quote, a quote related to motivational quote like that.
John 1:46
Oh, like, like quotes? Like, like…
Webmaster 1:48
Yes, of course.
John 1:50
Oh, okay. Okay. Sorry, I totally misunderstood you. I thought you meant code like, like software code, or…?
Webmaster 1 1:52
No, no.
John 1:53
Okay. I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s a very tricky area, if you’re just purely, if your whole website is just purely based on quotes because these are just small snippets of information. They’re usually essentially public domain. So anyone can include the same information on their own web website. So it’s like, very competitive, it’s easy for people to just take a database of quotes and put them online. And it’s a, I don’t think there’s like one simple trick to make a quote-based website rank. Instead, I think it’s overall probably a tricky area to try to get a new website to appear. Because it’s just like, it’s the same content as everyone else has. So if you want to stand out, you really need to do something different, rather than just the same quotes and essentially, like different categorizations, perhaps.
Webmaster 1 3:07
Okay, but what I found on the internet, what, like, when I was surfing the internet, what I found is, like, two, three websites have the same content, still, they are managed, like they are managed to rank on the first, second, and third position. So my question is, why is Google giving a rank to all those three, and Google is giving ranking. Google is giving the position. So why is Google not penalizing all websites, like based on who have published the first content, like who is the first owner of the content? So why Google are not doing these things? Why does Google always try to focus on the service-based and product-based website, not not on the quote-based website?
John 3:48
I mean, on the one hand, it’s not the same page for us, like if it’s a quote, it’s like a one or two lines of text. But on a web page, you have a lot more information on there. So from our point of view, it makes sense to rank those pages separately. So that’s something that we would essentially see as like, it’s normal. And with regards to penalizing these websites, if this is public information that anyone can publish it, it’s not that like the first person to say this quote is the only person to appear in search. Because usually, the quotes are from, from authors who have written something long ago. And it’s definitely not the case that the person running the website made up this quote, but rather, someone else did. So even if we were to say like the first person to say this quote is the one who should rank, I don’t think that would be like the average quote-based website.
