I keep seeing information gain / “non-commodity content” discussed as though we have fairly good evidence that Google rewards pages for saying something new.

I’m not convinced we can actually isolate that. I mean, Google’s own example makes me more skeptical.

They compare something generic like: “7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers”, with something much more specific and experience-based like: “Why We Waived the Inspection & Saved Money: A Look Inside the Sewer Line.”

The second one is obviously more unique. But it is also a completely different search problem.

It is narrower, more specific, probably has fewer directly competing documents/pages, uses more specific vocabulary, and is much closer to a long-tail information need.

So when that kind of content performs better, how are we separating:

information gain

uniqueness

better query relevance

lower competition

fewer competing documents

See, I totally get that info gain or diversity makes a lot of sense when choosing sources for AI answers.…