How Google judges whole sites, not single pages: every core and spam update, Panda's site-level quality score, the Helpful Content system, and what the ranking systems and patents actually say.
Twenty-one searches, the top three results against positions six to ten, every claim checked by hand. Duplicate pages, thin pages and reused titles were as common at the top.
Fifty websites, every finding verified: template pages, empty pages, reused titles and sitemaps that send crawlers elsewhere, and four things that look like mistakes but are not.
Thirty real websites, 25 pages each. The highest duplicate score went to a shop working as intended, and the clearest real problem was five addresses serving one page.
Every major Google core update and spam update from Panda to the 2026 continuous-update era: dates, what changed, winners/losers, and a recovery checklist.
Every ranking system in Google's own documentation, plus NavBoost and Information Gain, the two it never put in its own docs: sourced from a DOJ antitrust trial and a 2018 patent.
The five Google patents worth reading in full — PageRank, reasonable surfer, historical data, the Panda patent, site quality score — and a four-step test for telling a shipped system from a filed idea.
Every milestone from the 2023 Search Generative Experience launch to AI Overviews, AI Mode, and 2026, plus how to optimize content for them.
What the Google Panda update targeted, every refresh from 2011 to Panda 4.2, and how thin content is penalized today.
What the Google Penguin update targeted, every refresh from 2012 to Penguin 4.0, and how link spam is penalized today.
What a Google core update actually is, why Google never names specific factors, and the full list of core updates from March 2018 to the continuous-update era.
How to tell if you were hit by the Helpful Content Update, the people-first content checklist, and how to recover: from the 2022 launch to its 2024 merge into core.
The site scan compares pages from your sitemap with each other: shared wording, near-copies, thin pages and templated titles. Free, no signup.