I've been saying it for ages but people still keep writing "quality 2k-3k articles".
In my niche there are many websites like that and they still rank.
Let's say your keyword is 'blue widget' and you have 3 articles 'blue widgets', 'compare blue widgets', 'advantages of blue widgets'.
All 3 articles will have:
1. what is a blue widget? and then manually spun to have 3 copies.
2. then there's more fluff
3. finally on topic
4. more fluff
So instead of writing 500 word articles they add fluff to make them 2k long.
Google also says that backlinks aren't a major ranking factor. Even though any statistical analysis done on terms ranking shows it does. So let's not use "what google says" as anything that other then bull****.
The reality of the matter is that 1 year ago, bigger content tended to rank better. All of a sudden google changed that focus somewhere November last year and something I also just see happening more in May.
Currently, the site I wrote that have 2000 words of well documented content that answers the question of the query went down (pages that were number 1 for years mind you, so clearly the content wasn't that bad). Now being outranked by people who obviously used my content and did nothing more then make shorter dumbed down content.
Sites of mine that improved? The sites with thin, short content.
I am not even kidding that one of the sites I own has a content plan that is nothing more than the following:
XXXXX [fill value] XXXXX [fill value] XXXX.
100's of articles like above. Google doesn't care, and is absolutely right. This is CONTENT is KING /s
Mind you I am not complaining that this is happening. I wish they told me a year earlier this is what they wanted me to pump out. Finding writers who do research for 2000 words is a lot more expensive than finding a writer who has to basically fill out a form to produce content.
So much money I could have saved!!!!