What ranks on Google for marketing questions in 2026 is, most of the time, a 2,000 to 3,000 word guide that answers the question inside its opening paragraph. That is the clearest pattern in a set of 56 top-ranking pages TechMachaw measured on 19 September 2026 across 10 marketing, creator and ecommerce keywords.
The looser patterns matter just as much. Length ran from 520 to 8,500 words, and where a page sat inside the top six had almost no relationship with how long it was. Half carried a comparison table. Fewer than a third linked to a primary source. Below: the method, the sample, five findings, and where the data is too thin to claim anything.
Key takeaways
- 51 of 56 pages (91 percent) answered the query in roughly their first 100 words, the most consistent trait in the sample.
- Median length was 2,600 words, but the middle half ran 1,200 to 3,200 and 9 of the 29 top-three pages were under 1,500.
- Position inside the top six barely tracked word count (Spearman rho 0.057, n equals 56).
- Per-query median length ran from 875 to 4,000 words. The query sets the length, not the ranking.
- Tables appeared on 52 percent of pages. FAQ blocks appeared on 43 percent, more often at positions 4 to 6 than in the top three.
- Only 32 percent linked to a primary source. 84 percent showed a date, but only 43 percent showed a 2026 date.
How did we run this study?
We picked 10 marketing, creator and ecommerce keywords, recorded the top six organic results for each with a web search tool on 19 September 2026, then fetched all 60 pages with one identical extraction prompt. 56 pages returned data. 4 could not be fetched and were excluded.
Seven keywords were question queries and three were comparison queries, across paid media, social, SEO and ecommerce. One search each, US locale, no personalisation, organic results only. Each of the 60 URLs was fetched once and scored on the same eight fields: approximate body word count, whether the opening roughly 100 words answered the query, H2 heading count, comparison table, FAQ section, the date as shown, whether the body linked to a primary source, and page type. All 60 rows, failures included, were saved before any aggregate was computed in Python.
What failed: 4 of 60 URLs returned nothing. Three were blocked by robots.txt rules, at positions 1 and 6 on one keyword and position 5 on another. One returned an HTTP 401. All four stay in the raw file with a failure code and are excluded from every number below. That is a 93 percent capture rate, and because two blocks hit the same keyword, our smallest cell holds only 4 pages. One further limit: word count here approximates body text rather than counting it exactly, so treat every length figure as a band.
What was in the sample?
Ten keywords and 56 measured pages: 39 from seven question queries and 17 from three comparison queries. Guides made up 44 of the 56. Listicles showed up on one query only and tool pages on four. The median page ran 2,600 words with 7 H2 headings.
| Keyword | Pages | Median words | Median H2s | Table | FAQ | Cites source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| what is a good ctr | 4 | 875 | 4.5 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| instagram engagement rate benchmark | 6 | 2,600 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 1 |
| amazon fba fees | 6 | 2,650 | 8 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| best free social media scheduler | 6 | 4,000 | 11.5 | 6 | 5 | 1 |
| how to write a media plan | 5 | 2,800 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| what is geo in seo | 6 | 2,800 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| cpm vs cpc | 6 | 1,075 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| shopify vs amazon | 5 | 2,100 | 8 | 3 | 0 | 2 |
| how to calculate engagement rate | 6 | 1,950 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| what is a good conversion rate for ecommerce | 6 | 3,700 | 8.5 | 5 | 4 | 2 |
Read the median words column first. The typical page for “what is a good ctr” was under 900 words. The typical page for “best free social media scheduler” was 4,000. Those two queries sit in the same content plan and need very different pages.
| Measure | Result across 56 pages |
|---|---|
| Median word count | 2,600 (range 520 to 8,500) |
| Median H2 headings | 7 (range 0 to 18) |
| Answers query in first 100 words | 51 of 56 (91 percent) |
| Has a comparison table | 29 of 56 (52 percent) |
| Has an FAQ section | 24 of 56 (43 percent) |
| Links to a primary source | 18 of 56 (32 percent) |
| Shows a publish or update date | 47 of 56 (84 percent) |
| Shows a 2026 date | 24 of 56 (43 percent) |
| Page type is a guide | 44 of 56 (79 percent) |
Finding 1: almost every ranking page answers the question immediately
51 of 56 pages (91 percent) answered the search query inside roughly their first 100 words. This held at 90 percent in the top three and 93 percent at positions 4 to 6. Nothing else in the study was this consistent, and it is the cheapest thing here to copy.
Only five pages failed the test, three of them at position 3, so a slow opening is survivable. But at 91 percent adoption it is closer to a format requirement than a tactic. The five that missed opened with background on why the topic matters before reaching the answer.
The opening paragraph is also what AI answer engines pull when they summarise a page. If your first 100 words are throat clearing, you have given a generative engine nothing quotable. That is the logic behind the boxed answers under every heading here, and behind our guide to getting a brand mentioned in AI answers.
Finding 2: there is no winning word count
Across 56 pages, the rank correlation between position and word count was 0.057 (Spearman) and 0.158 (Pearson). That is noise at this sample size. Nine of the 29 top-three pages were under 1,500 words, and four were over 3,500.
The top three had a median of 2,800 words against 2,100 for positions 4 to 6. That looks like a length effect until you check the spread. The shortest page in the study, about 520 words, ranked second. A 650 word page ranked first for another keyword. Two 8,500 word pages sat at position 5. Google says the same: its guidance asks creators whether they are “writing to a particular word count” and answers that it has no preferred one, in Google Search Central on helpful, reliable, people-first content.
| Measure | Positions 1 to 3 (n equals 29) | Positions 4 to 6 (n equals 27) |
|---|---|---|
| Median word count | 2,800 | 2,100 |
| Median H2 headings | 8 | 6 |
| Answers query in first 100 words | 90 percent | 93 percent |
| Has a comparison table | 52 percent | 52 percent |
| Has an FAQ section | 31 percent | 56 percent |
| Links to a primary source | 34 percent | 30 percent |
Say this plainly: with 29 pages in one group and 27 in the other, none of those gaps is strong enough to call a ranking effect. Treat the word count row as suggestive and the table and answer rows as flat.
Finding 3: the query decides the length, not the ranking
Per-query median word counts ran from 875 to 4,000 across the 10 keywords, a 4.6 times spread. The gap between the top three and positions 4 to 6 was only 1.33 times. Which question you answer explains far more about page length than how well the page ranks.
Definition style queries produced short pages: 875 words for “what is a good ctr” and 1,075 for “cpm vs cpc”. Queries that ask you to weigh options produced long ones: 4,000 words for “best free social media scheduler” and 3,700 for “what is a good conversion rate for ecommerce”. By query type, the three comparison keywords produced a median of 2,800 words and 8 headings against 2,400 words and 6 headings for the seven question keywords, on only 17 pages, so read that as a direction.
Formula: Target length = median length of the pages already ranking for YOUR query
Example: say your query’s top six have a median of 875 words, as we measured for “what is a good ctr” across the 4 pages we could fetch. Write to the all-query median of 2,600 instead and you have produced about 1,725 extra words, three times the page the results show. At an assumed 500 words an hour, that is roughly 3.5 extra hours per page and 70 hours across a 20 page plan. The rate and plan size are assumptions for this example.
Finding 4: tables are common, FAQ blocks are not a ranking signal
Comparison tables appeared on 29 of 56 pages (52 percent). FAQ sections appeared on 24 of 56 (43 percent), but on 56 percent of pages at positions 4 to 6 against 31 percent in the top three. On this sample, an FAQ block is not what puts a page in the top three.
Only 17 pages had both a table and an FAQ. Twenty had neither and still ranked. Tables clustered where you would expect: all six measured pages for the scheduler query had one, five of six for the ecommerce conversion query, and none for “how to write a media plan”.
The FAQ result is worth a pause, because plenty of advice still treats an FAQ block as a ranking lever. Google retired the FAQ rich result: its FAQPage structured data documentation records that the feature stopped appearing in Search from 7 May 2026. FAQ sections still earn their place when readers have real follow up questions, and they still give AI engines clean question and answer pairs, but do not add one expecting a rankings bump. With 29 pages against 27, call the gap suggestive: what it rules out is any claim that an FAQ helps you reach the top three.
Finding 5: most ranking pages neither cite a source nor look fresh
Only 18 of 56 pages (32 percent) linked to a primary source, and sourcing did not separate the top three from positions 4 to 6. Dates were more common: 84 percent showed one, but only 43 percent of all measured pages carried a 2026 date, and seven pages dated 2023 or older still ranked.
Sourcing varied by topic. For “what is geo in seo”, 5 of 6 pages cited something primary, which fits a young topic where the papers and announcements are the story. For “best free social media scheduler” and “cpm vs cpc”, 1 of 6 each. For “instagram engagement rate benchmark”, 1 of 6, though all six published benchmark numbers. We are reporting link presence, not judging any page: those numbers may come from the publisher’s own product data, a legitimate primary source even without an outbound link. But a reader cannot tell, and neither can an AI engine deciding what to trust. If almost 7 in 10 ranking pages do not link their claims, one that does is easy to tell apart. For our own breakdown of Amazon FBA fees, the primary document was Amazon’s 2026 US referral and FBA fee update, itself one of the pages in this study, ranking fourth.
On dates, nine pages showed none at all, including results at positions 3 and 6, so a missing date is not disqualifying. The oldest dated page still ranking was from 2019, at position 2. But a visible date is the norm, and the temptation is to bump it without touching the content. Google’s documentation on publication dates is direct: a date must describe the page itself, not the events described on it.
| Date shown on page | Pages | Share of the 56 measured |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 24 | 43 percent |
| 2025 | 15 | 27 percent |
| 2024 | 1 | 2 percent |
| 2023 or older | 7 | 13 percent |
| No date shown | 9 | 16 percent |
What this means for marketers and creators
What this means for marketers and creators
For marketers running a content programme: stop briefing to a house word count. Before each brief, pull the top six results for that exact query and take their median length and heading count. That number moves 4.6 times across queries while barely moving across positions, so one house standard will be wrong for most pages. Put the time you save into the two things almost nobody does: a direct opening answer and a linked primary source for every factual claim.
For creators and solo publishers: the length finding removes the argument that you must out-write a funded content team. A 650 word page ranked first in our sample and a 520 word page ranked second. Spend your effort on the first 100 words, a table where the question involves a real choice, and a date you actually maintain. Skip the FAQ block unless readers really ask those questions: the rich result it earned was retired in May 2026, and our sample shows no top-three advantage.
What we did not test
This is one snapshot of 56 pages from one location on one day, scored by an automated extractor. It describes what ranking pages look like. It does not establish why they rank, and it cannot tell you what would happen if you changed any of these things on your own page.
- Causation. We changed nothing, so nothing here proves any feature causes a ranking.
- Backlinks, domain strength and site history. Not measured, and they may explain more than anything we did.
- Page speed, layout, ad density and answer quality. We recorded whether a page answered up front, not how well.
- Location and personalisation. One US locale, one tool, one day. Indian, UK and logged in results will differ.
- Search features. Organic results only. AI Overviews, ads and People Also Ask boxes were not captured.
- Exact word counts. Ours approximate body text, and sidebars may be counted inconsistently across sites.
- Comparison queries at scale. Three of ten keywords, giving 17 pages, so every comparison split here is directional.
- The four unfetched pages. Three robots.txt blocks and one HTTP 401, two on the same keyword.
What checklist can you apply to your next page?
Work through this before you publish. Each item maps to something measured here, with the share of ranking pages already doing it, so you can see which items are table stakes and which are real differentiation.
| Check | Ranking pages doing it | Why it is on the list |
|---|---|---|
| Answer the exact query in your first 100 words | 91 percent | Table stakes, and what AI engines quote |
| Match the median length of the top six for your query | n/a | Medians varied 4.6 times |
| Use 6 to 9 H2 sections | Median was 7 | Skimmable without filler |
| Add a table when the query involves a real choice | 52 percent | Near universal on comparisons |
| Link every factual claim to a primary source | 32 percent | The biggest gap, cheap to close |
| Show a real publish or update date | 84 percent | Never bump a date you did not earn |
| Add an FAQ only if readers really ask | 43 percent | No top-three advantage here |
| Pick the format the query already shows | 79 percent were guides | Listicles hit one query only |
Two habits sit behind that list: measure the results before you brief the page, and write the opening answer first. That is the discipline behind our explainer on generative engine optimization and the free GEO readiness score checker. For format by page type, the engagement rate formula guide shows the short definition format, the roundup of free social media schedulers shows the long comparison format, and our notes on AI content and Google guidelines cover the documentation. The TechMachaw glossary defines CPM, CTR and the rest.
Frequently asked questions
How many pages did this study measure?
Sixty result URLs across 10 keywords, six organic results each. Fifty six returned usable data. Four could not be fetched: three blocked by robots.txt rules and one returning an HTTP 401. All four remain in the raw file with a failure code and are excluded from every number reported.
Does word count affect Google rankings?
Not in this sample. Across 56 pages the rank correlation between position and word count was 0.057, indistinguishable from noise, and Google’s own documentation says it has no preferred word count. Use the median length of pages ranking for your query, which varied from 875 to 4,000 words across our 10 keywords.
Do FAQ sections help a page rank?
Our data shows no top-three advantage. FAQ sections appeared on 43 percent of measured pages, but on 56 percent at positions 4 to 6 against 31 percent in the top three. Google also stopped showing the FAQ rich result from 7 May 2026. Add one only when readers have real follow up questions.
How important is a publish date on a page?
Eighty four percent of measured pages displayed one, but nine with no date still ranked and seven carrying a 2023 or older date were still in the top six. Show a real date and do not update it on a page you have not changed.
Should every page have a comparison table?
Only when the query involves an actual choice. Tables appeared on 52 percent of pages overall, 59 percent of comparison query pages, and all six measured pages for one product roundup query. They appeared on none of the five pages for a pure how-to query.
Can this study tell you why a page ranks?
No. It describes what already-ranking pages look like on one day from one location. We changed nothing and measured no effect, and did not measure backlinks, domain strength, page speed or AI Overviews. Read every figure as a description, not a ranking factor.
What should you do next?
Pick one page you are about to write. Search its exact query, record the top six results, note their median length and heading count, then write to that number with a direct opening answer and linked sources. That single change is this study made practical.
For the planning side, start with the guide to building a digital media plan. We will rerun these 10 queries and report what moved. Join the free TechMachaw newsletter to get the next study when it lands.
