Information gain is the additional information your page contributes beyond what already ranks for the query.
Whether Google runs a literal information gain score is still unconfirmed.
But whether or not it improves your ranking is almost irrelevant.
You should care about information gain because it’s your differentiator.
The extra effort you put into creating useful, memorable content can equate to growing your owned audience, building a moat, earning mentions in AI answers, and becoming a name search engines actually recognize.
Below we’ll dig into what information gain actually means, what we know (and don’t know) about whether Google uses it, and, most importantly, how to improve your content with information gain.
What is information gain in SEO?
Information gain is a measure of how much new information a page adds beyond what a searcher has already seen.
The term isn’t originally an SEO one—it’s borrowed from machine learning.
The patent addresses a specific problem: search results where every page says essentially the same thing.
Take the keyword ”how to improve your credit score”.
There are only so many things that can actually change a credit score.
FICO, one of the early pioneers of credit scoring, laid out five core factors:
- Payment history
- Amounts owed
- Length of credit history
- New credit
- Credit mix
In other words, this is a finite topic. When multiple websites say the same thing, that’s just… the answer.
This is where information gain becomes so important. Including the criteria on that list is the bare minimum.
Sites writing about this topic need to offer more.
Unfortunately, they don’t.
Of the seven organic search results ranking for this keyword (minus ads), all share the exact same information…
And, crucially, these sites offer nothing more than that…
Seven different institutions, including credit unions, bank trade associations, and mega-bureaus, converge on the same handful of topics, just with a different number in the title (5 tips, 7 tips, 10 things).
This is a missed opportunity. There’s genuine room for differentiation and creativity here.
A bank could cite its own customer data on what actually moved scores, or an author could share a personal before/after of their own credit report.
The topic is crying out for originality, but no one delivers.
Google’s proposed fix for this exact situation is a score:
“An information gain score for a given document is indicative of additional information that is included in the given document beyond information contained in other documents that were already presented to the user.”
The information game patent reveals Google’s intention to enrich the SERP with novel information.
In the words of our Director of Content Marketing, Ryan Law…
“Information gain is Google rewarding content for being different and not just better.”
