Content length checker
Counts visible words per page against a 300-word floor and a 600-word target.
What TMOD checks
- Extracts visible text from each crawled page, excluding navigation chrome, scripts and markup, and counts words.
- Passes pages at 600 words or more, warns between 300 and 600 with a note that the page could be more in-depth, and fails below 300.
- Reports the count for every page individually rather than a site average, so one long page cannot mask a set of short ones.
- Aggregates a site-wide total that the depth and page-count checks then use as corroborating signal.
Why it matters
Length is a proxy, not a goal. Nobody at Google has a word-count rule. What length correlates with is whether a page had enough to say to be worth publishing, and at the low end that correlation is strong enough to be useful: pages under 300 words very rarely cover anything completely.
The 600-word target is where a page usually has room for context, the actual answer, and something specific, an example, a caveat, a step. Below that, pages tend to be a definition and a restatement of the title.
Reading this check correctly matters. A page flagged at 250 words is not being told to become 600 words. It is being told that if the topic deserves a page, it probably deserves more than this, and if it does not, it probably should not be a separate page.
How to fix it
01Ask whether the page should exist
The best fix for many short pages is deletion or a merge. If a page exists because a template generated it, or to target a keyword variant, folding it into a fuller page is better for both visitors and search, and it clears the thin-page flag at the same time.
02Add specifics, not adjectives
The way to make a short page longer without making it worse is to add things only you can add: a real example, actual numbers, a screenshot with an explanation, an objection and its answer. Restating the introduction in different words adds length and subtracts quality.
03Check what is actually being counted
If a page you know is long reports a low count, the text is probably not in the HTML, rendered by JavaScript after load, inside an image, or in a tab or accordion that only populates on interaction. The rendering check tells you how much of the page falls into that category, and it is worth knowing regardless of word counts, because search engines have the same problem.
What to add when a page really is too short
The useful additions are the ones that could only come from you. What you tried that did not work and why. The number you measured rather than the range everyone quotes. The objection a knowledgeable reader would raise, answered honestly. The case where the advice does not apply. A screenshot of the actual thing, with a sentence explaining what to look at.
The additions that make a page worse are equally predictable. A three-paragraph introduction before the subject appears. A definition of a term the reader clearly already knows. The same point restated under a new subheading. A conclusion summarising what was just read. Each of these adds to the count and subtracts from the page, and enough of them turns a short useful page into a long useless one.
There is a simple test before you expand anything. Write down what someone would be able to do after reading the page that they could not do before. If that sentence is easy to write, the page needs more of what it already is. If it is hard, more words will not rescue it and merging it into something larger is the better move.
Why this is reported per page and never as an average
A site average is the most flattering number available and the least informative. One 4,000-word guide lifts the mean enough to hide thirty stubs, and the mean is not what anyone assessing the site experiences. They click three pages, and what matters is which three.
The distribution is the real signal, in both directions. A healthy content site has a wide spread: short notes, medium articles, a few long pieces, because subjects differ in what they need. A site where every page lands within a few percent of the same length is not varied writing, and the uniformity heuristic reads that spread as a fingerprint of templated production rather than as consistency.
So the per-page report is what you work from. Sort by count, look at the bottom of the list first, and decide page by page whether each one should be deepened, merged or deleted. That list is also usually the same set of URLs showing up in the near-duplicate pairs, which is a good sign you are looking at one problem rather than two.
Questions
Is there an ideal word count for ranking?
No, and any specific number you have been told is invented. Correlational studies showing longer pages rank better mostly measure that thorough pages tend to be longer, not that length causes ranking. Write until the topic is covered and stop. This check exists to catch the low end, where pages clearly have not covered anything.
My landing pages are short by design. Is that penalised?
This check counts them, and on a site that is mostly landing pages the report will look harsh. That is a limitation worth knowing: these engines assume an article-shaped, content-led site because that is what AdSense approval is judged on. For a product site, weight this check lightly and pay attention to the technical audit instead.
Does navigation and footer text count toward the total?
No. Visible text is extracted from the page body with navigation chrome, scripts and markup removed, so a large menu or a long footer does not inflate the count. That is deliberate, otherwise every page on a site with a big footer would clear the threshold automatically.