This story is still breaking and we will be continuing to update this article with new information when it becomes available.
Google’s war on content farms and low quality websites has officially been launched in the form of a major update to the search engine’s algorithm. The changes, which went live this week, impact 11.8 percent of all search results, meaning that this will have an impact on most site owners, for better or worse.
The blogosphere was buzzing this morning with many site owners complaining about a major decrease in traffic from Google search. Some have seen search traffic decrease over 50 percent, essentially overnight. When Google first announced their war on content farms I suspected that the changes would have a negative effect on many bloggers as well. However I did not expect the changes to hit authoritative sources as hard as they have.
1. The update implemented this week is in addition to a smaller algorithm update at the beginning of February (mentioned by Matt Cutts here) that was targeted at filtering out duplicate content and scraper sites. The first update only affected 2% of search queries, much less than the more recent update.
2. Results from the Chrome Personal Blocklist extension are not yet being used as a factor in determining search rankings. The Chrome Personal Blocklist allows users to block certain domains from appearing in their personalized search results. This data from this extension is then transmitted to Google and will eventually be used in determining site quality.
Matt Cutts has stated in an interview with Danny Sullivan that 84% of the 50 top sites reported with the chrome extension have been impacted by the new changes. I’m not sure what to make of this yet because it seems like most sites on the internet have been impacted by these changed in one way or another.
There is a good chance that many of the sites already banned by Blekko earlier this year are also in the top 50 sites that have been blocked / reported with the Chrome extension.
Content Farms Banned from Blekko
ehow.com
experts-exchange.com
naymz.com
activehotels.com
robtex.com
encyclopedia.com
fixya.com
chacha.com
123people.com
download3k.com
petitionspot.com
thefreedictionary.com
networkedblogs.com
buzzillions.com
shopwiki.com
wowxos.com
answerbag.com
allexperts.com
freewebs.com
copygator.com
3. Unlike Blekko, Google has decided not to directly ban content farms like eHow, but to devalue their content and demote them in the search results. What concerns me is that the new factors used to determine exactly how valuable a sites content is remain a mystery. This has left many bloggers who write original content puzzled as to why they have seen such a major drop in traffic.
4. Google has stated that there will be more updates to the search algorithm in the coming months which continue to devalue low quality content in the search results.
5. Larry Fitzgibbon of Demand Media has officially responded to Google’s declaration of war, essentially shrugging off the new changes and claiming that Demand Media hasn’t been effected yet. However considering the changes have only been in place for a day it’s probably best to take that statement with a grain of salt.
Again – we will continue to update this guide as more information becomes available.
Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking–a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries–and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites–sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites–sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on…
It’s worth noting that this update does not rely on the feedback we’ve received from the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, which we launched last week. However, we did compare the Blocklist data we gathered with the sites identified by our algorithm, and we were very pleased that the preferences our users expressed by using the extension are well represented. If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them, which is strong independent confirmation of the user benefits.
I’m curious, can you please find out, what are the ” top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension”?
If Google is not saying, could you speculate? eHow?
Interesting! Hopefully my sites havent been impacted!!
Once I read the story about it online, I immediate thought about sending it to you, but I was pretty sure you were aware of it.
wow interesting, no need to panic everyone i believe alot of good can come out of this
just a refinement process is all, thanks for the informative post as always
I love how Google tries to solve 99% of problems algorithmically. I think it proves there is still ‘creative’ space for the big boys to buy into paid for links (to a point).
4 years ago I wrote it’s still all about quality content and making visitors stick. I’m no prophet but proof that the goals are the same – just the posts are moving around a little
It’s no secret what Google wants… their is no doubt that a quality SEO company can help your ranking efforts drastically, (as we have seen a huge spike in traffic recently), but at the end of the day, it all boils down to high quality links, and populating your blog with engaging content.