Google's John Mueller again said word count is not a thing with SEO or Google Search. He said on Mastodon, "In general, when Google thinks of "thin content" in terms of #SEO, it's not about the number of words, it's more about the value that it adds to the internet." He added that internally at Google they think about the upper limit on words, they want to get to the point without the fluff.
John wrote, "Unrelated to your question, but interestingly the times I see "word count" mentioned internally at Google, it's always about upper limits. Don't waste people's time, get to the point. Fluff + many words = a waste of the read's complete time. Fluff + few words is at least quick."
I love this, I am OCD about time management, being the most efficient with your time. So much so that I find it insulting and disrespectful when people repeat words or even messages in speeches or content they write. In short, say it once and move on.
Will the upper limit of word count become a ranking factor in Google Search? I doubt it. But if Google can detect that the content is less helpful because it goes on and on and people just want you to get to the point, maybe, one day, Google will not rank those fluff pieces so well.
As you know, I wrote about this before, asking will Google target fluff pieces and Google said fluff content is hard for search engines to understand and thus rank. Google also said previous that word count does not determine how helpful content and in 2019, John said word count is not a ranking factor and in 2018 John said word count is not indicative of quality. Google won't penalize you for short articles and Google said short articles can rank well and then again in 2014 said short articles are not low quality. Google has been recently saying to avoid fluff leading some to believe Google may not rank fluff well in the future.
In fact, Google even removed the referece to word count in the Search Console document recently.
Here is a good GIF to sum up this story:
Forum discussion at Mastodon.
