I wrote to a number that does not exist, for a long time, without ever once checking where it came from.

Not a rough target. An actual figure, with a source I could never find, repeated by every guide about getting an AdSense account approved. Fifteen hundred words. I padded to it. I added sections to reach it. I had never once checked whether Google wrote it down anywhere.

It is not written down anywhere. Google published a definition of content quality, and it is three words, and none of them is a number.

This follows on from the time I went looking for the phrase "thin content" in Google's own pages and found it on two of nine. That article was right about the phrase. It was wrong to leave you thinking there is no definition at all, and this is the rest of it.

Where it is

The Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Google's own standard for evaluating search quality, 182 pages, published by Google, revised regularly, freely downloadable.

It is not a page of advice. It is not a blog post. It is the document Google's own Search documentation points at when it needs to say what content quality means. On the page about using generative AI, Google does not define the standard itself, it sends you here:

"You might find value in looking at the Search Quality Raters guidelines on how to evaluate both scaled content abuse (section 4.6.5) and main content created with little to no effort, little to no originality, and little to no added value (section 4.6.6)."

So the document is not a leak and not a rumour. Google cites it as the definition.

The definition is three words

Section 3.2 is called Quality of the Main Content. This is the whole of it:

"For most pages, the quality of the MC can be determined by the amount of effort, originality, and talent or skill that went into the creation of the content."

Effort. Originality. Talent or skill.

Then each one is explained, and each explanation is about a person:

Effort: "Consider the extent to which a human being actively worked to create satisfying content."

Originality: "Consider the extent to which the content offers unique, original content that is not available on other websites."

Talent or Skill: "Consider the extent to which the content is created with enough talent and skill to provide a satisfying experience for people who visit the page."

That is it. A human being, working, on something that is not available anywhere else, well enough that a visitor is satisfied.

And "word count" appears zero times

I extracted the text of all 182 pages and counted. Not because counting is proof of anything, but because the advice I had been following was so specific that I wanted to be sure I had not missed a section.

phrase times it appears
word count 0
content length 0
minimum length 0
number of words 0

The document that defines content quality for Google never once mentions how long content should be.

There is a section defining filler. There is a section on what counts as copied. There is a section on how to tell whether content is copied. There is a whole rating scale. In none of it, anywhere, is there a length.

"Write longer" is a rule with no source.

What "effort" actually means, in Google's words

This is the part that changed how I work.

Section 3.2 gives one negative example, and it is worth reading slowly because it describes a very specific kind of site:

"On the other hand, the automatic creation of thousands of pages by running existing freely available content through existing translation software without any oversight, manual curation, etc., would not be considered to have effort."

The mechanism in that sentence is not translation. Translation is the example. The mechanism is automatic creation, from existing content, without oversight, and Google wrote it down as the thing that is not effort.

I have a site I can hold against that sentence. It published 392 articles in ten weeks. 320 of them were derived from other sites' reporting. The busiest single day was 35 articles.

By average word count it was the healthier of the two sites I could measure, 1,143 words against an approved site's 500 to 1,800. It was refused anyway.

Length was never the variable. Google's sentence says what was.

Two sentences that close the obvious escape routes

If you have read this far you are probably thinking one of two things. I was.

"But I link my sources." Section 4.6.6:

"Such pages should be rated Lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source."

Citing where something came from does not make it yours. That is uncomfortable to read, because attributing borrowed reporting is exactly what a careful publisher does to feel honest about it. Google says it does not count.

"But I rewrote it." Also section 4.6.6:

"We will consider MC to be paraphrased if it contains content that is unoriginal and exists on other pages, with different wording, organization or phrasing."

"Automated tools can also be used to create paraphrased content by restating or summarizing the content on other pages."

Different wording, organization or phrasing, same judgement. Rewriting a source is not writing. And running a page through a tool to summarise it is named in the document, in advance, as still paraphrased.

There is a third line, about content that has been altered just enough to be hard to trace. Google's words for it are "copied with minimal alteration", and the document says the changes "are deliberately done to make it difficult to find the original source."

Padding is the failure, not the fix

Here is the section I wish I had read years ago.

5.2.2 Filler as a Poor User Experience.

"Sometimes, MC includes 'filler', low-effort content that adds little value and doesn't directly support the purpose of the page. Filler can artificially inflate content, creating a page that appears rich but lacks content website visitors find valuable."

"A Low rating is appropriate if the page contains a large amount of low quality and unhelpful filler."

"Artificially inflate content, creating a page that appears rich."

That is what padding to a word count actually is. Not protection from a thin-content label. The label itself, defined by Google, in a list of reasons to be rated Low.

The "Final Thoughts" section that repeats your introduction in different words. The "Why This Matters" heading inserted because the article looked short. Google has a word for all of it, and the word is filler, and the word appears in a list of reasons to be rated Low.

I was adding the problem, believing I was removing it.

Before you go and read it: one thing you need to know

I am not going to let this article end without saying it, because I have seen it abused.

The rater guidelines are not a ranking document. Section 0.1 says so in plain words:

"No single rating can directly impact how a particular webpage, website, or result appears in Google Search, nor can it cause specific webpages, websites, or results to move up or down on the search results page."

No human being reads your site and scores it. No score moves you. If someone tells you they can get your site "rated", they are selling something that does not exist.

So what is the document good for?

It tells you what Google means by the words Google uses. That is all, and it is a great deal. "Effort, originality, talent or skill" is a far more useful sentence to write by than "aim for 1,500 words", and unlike the word count, it is the one Google actually published and still cites.

What I do now

I do not count words. I answer three questions instead, and they are Google's three, in my own language.

1. Who did the work? Was there a person, doing something, testing it, measuring it, reading the primary source, taking the screenshot? If the honest answer is "a tool summarised three pages", the answer is no.

2. Is this available anywhere else? Not "did I rewrite it". Is the substance of it obtainable somewhere else in one search? If yes, mine has to add something or it is a copy with different words.

3. Does a visitor get anything? Not "is it long". Would someone finish it and know something they did not know, or be able to do something they could not?

I have never answered those three and needed a word count.

The rule I was following was invented by people repeating each other, and it had the opposite of the intended effect, it made me add filler, which is one of the few things Google has actually written down as a reason to rate a page low.

The real definition is three words long, it is about effort rather than volume, and it has been available to read the whole time.