Matt Cutts on Website size

I ran across an interesting vid from Matt Cutts talking about whether size of a site really matters with ranking. He basically said no, but seemed to be skirting the issue.

He talks about links being the main way for a site to gain authority and get more of the site indexed. He was basically talking about external links, but it would seem to me that internal links must count for something as long as the linking page is indexed.

Anyway I just thought I would share since this was just posted today.

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp#p/a/u/1/Mha9q2aAfdM

So size doesn't matter? thank F**k for that LOL But really if size did matter for ranking purposes wouldn't articles and Squidoo fail to rank, and we all know they rank well.

What I got from the video is that a website with gazillion pages and no backlinks means ZERO/nothing/ squat. Which is common sense. Search engine trust comes primarily from links. So backlinks as long as they appear natural) will always outweigh number of pages.

If that was not the case, we would not be ranking and we would not be making money. But you can not generalize this statement. Because the number of pages is a large factor in the authority of a site. And pages of authority sites do rank! Sometimes even without backlinks! If you're doing affiliate marketing, I'm sure you've seen it... to many times.

At this point we have the advantage, because as long as you re building backlinks you will make money. But if you stop, what happens? Your efforts are wasted, as the site hasn't reach authority status or as other sites are appearing in the niche.

And google favors big sites. Their algorithm is created to support big sites. If things stay the same, all is good. But from what I see authority sites are being put higher& higher in the serps. It's not a "the world is ending thing", it's the natural progression of the internet.

So you can't actually say size doesn't matter! Because it does!

This is why I said he was skirting the issue. Size does matter because links matter. If you have a link to your home page from every page in a site, then those pages contribute to the authority as long as they are indexed.

It does seem that he is saying external links carry more weight then internal links, but this is something we all already knew.