Sorry bottom feeders, but Google says your time has come. An intense, new algorithmic adjustment arrived the other day and it doesn’t tolerate your kind. Projected to influence almost 10.5 billion search results every month, this adjustment lowers the rank of scraper sites, link farms, and other useless sites while increasing the rank of quality sites. What motivated this change? Google’s post, Finding more high quality sites in search explains, “Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”
Quality means increased visibility
If there was ever a justification for content marketing this is it. From now on, Google rewards websites with “original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis…” with higher search rankings amplifying the strong bond between search, social, and SEO. Want to boost your brand’s visibility on search? Fill your website and blog with compelling content. As TopRank’s Lee Odden says, ” If Social Media and SEO fit together like peanut butter and jelly then content is the bread that holds them together.” Add social engagement from authoritative users into the mix and I predict powerful results. Google says this recent algorithm adjustment is just a beginning and they plan to present us with more changes in the future.
They were warned.
The developers and SEO companies whose sites are being penalized for poor quality have known all along what Google considers the high road. My guess is they ignored Google’s quality guidelines because their black hat strategies were working for them. Doesn’t look like they’ll work anymore. Take a look at Google’s quality expectations:
Quality guidelines – basic principles
- Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
- Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
- Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
- Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
The data is in and the story is huge. According to search engine land, associated content is taking a big hit. Here is a brief look. Top losers: ezinearticles.com, associatedcontent.com, suite101.com, hubpages.com and buzzle.com. Top winners: youtube.com, ebay.com, facebook.com, and instructables.com. Biggest surprise to me - slideshare.com and tehnorati.com are on the losers list. “Number Crunchers: Who Lost in Google’s ‘Farmer’ Algorithm Change” by Danny Sullivan is a MUST READ. Take a moment and review Sullivan’s compelling data and share your thoughts here.
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Catherine – this is an excellent post, well written and full of good information. I wasn’t aware of this new change by Google. I’m glad, actually, because those of us bloggers who put a lot of thought into our content should be recognized for our effort. This isn’t being boastful but we are offering information to our readers that they can use. At least that’s my goal. Thanks for the tips.
Did the author of this article perform her own research into the effects of Google’s latest changes, or did she simply assume that what Google claims have been the effects are the actual effects?
I operate a website, TrueDelta.com, that provides unique information about the reliability and real-world fuel economy of cars. We get none of our content from anyone else. The needs of site members have always been my top priority.
Supposedly the latest changes are designed to benefit sites like mine. Instead, I’ve seen my traffic decline by about a third, while content farms and site lacking unique content appear to have received higher rankings.
I’ve learned from posts on various forums that I’m not alone in this. A number of other relatively small providers of unique content have been impacted like I have.
My guess is that the latest changes benefit large, well-funded sites irrespective of whether or not they provide unique, useful content.
Michael, your traffic decreased by a third since Friday? Research results regarding Google’s algorithmic adjustment aren’t available yet as it was just implemented last week.
I’m very excited about it too Jeannette.
Saw a one-third drop instantly when the new algorithm was implemented. I’m now reconsidering my plans to hire more people.
Owners of other sites with unique content that are seeing drops of up to 60 percent, and sites that steal their content ranking higher, have been posting in the SERP Changes threads here:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/
You should not blindly accept that whatever Google says is happening is actually happening.
I should add that I not only have I never employed “black hat” SEO tactics, but I’ve done very little period just for SEO. My site has always been very focused on the needs of visitors.
One outcome is that I have a large number of pages to present the site’s information in different ways. I’ve even been planning to break up the pages further, since people tell me that amount of information per page often overwhelms them. But it’s possible that the resulting lower average amount of traffic per page is hurting me with the new algorithm.
Great! Maybe I’ll start getting more traffic organically. I’ve always been disappointed in the amount of traffic that I receive from Google. I concentrate on writing for my readers. I do try to optimize for SEO but it’s tough to compete with these content farms.
I’ve been reading a little on this. So, it’s good to read your take on it Catherine. Thanks!.
Sherryl Perry recently posted..Where Does Your Website Traffic Come From
Michael, Google specifically states they did not implement their big algorithm adjustment until around Feb. 23 which was just last Thursday. I’d be happy to set up a conference with you and go over your site’s specs. Unless Google is lying, something else is affecting your stats.
As always you deliver quality content Catherine. The guy who built my website years ago, told me to worry less about seo and more about the quality whether the content was on my site or my blog. Ulimately, the one sentence in your post that stuck me the strongest is “does this help my users”. We have to believe that if we maintain high integrity toward our readers or target market, that it will come back to us with positivity.
Keyuri Joshi recently posted..Life Lessons from An Elephant
Catherine,
You seem locked into the assumption that the algorithm change isn’t the cause for my decline in traffic.
What gave you the idea that I didn’t observe an instantaneous one-third decline early on Thursday? That’s exactly when it happened, and it was clearly 100% due to the algorithm change you write of so glowingly, without justification.
This change is hurting many people that it is supposedly helping. And when people like yourself essentially reprint Google’s press release, Google will feel less need to correct their mistakes–they’ll “believe their own press.” Though you likely don’t realize it, this makes you part of the problem rather than part of a solution.
Michael Karesh
TrueDelta
That’s one way of looking at it. I prefer to look at data over a longer stretch of time. Get back to me in six weeks, let me see ur analtyics from the 2010 – also- direct me to others experiencing the same and I’ll write about it.
Thanks Keyuri. I’m happy to hear about Google’s algorithm change too. There are some doubters in the room and I’m curious to see how it all works out.
I provided a link to a forum with at least three relevant threads earlier.
We are hoping that further fine-tuning of the algorithm might improve our situation. You’ll find some talk of this possibility in the threads I refer to. At the same time, some other affected sites have posted that they’ve already laid people off.
As a consultant, any changes are a win for you, so I can somewhat understand your optimism. But for a site operator like myself even a few weeks of sharply reduced traffic will cost many thousands of dollars that was going to go into improving content for users.
Michael – check this out: http://searchengineland.com/who-lost-in-googles-farmer-algorithm-change-66173
Does this data help you? Are you backlinked to any of the losing sites? Keep me posted.
Very interesting articles, thanks for the link.
I’ve had nothing at all to do with the great majority of the listed sites. But I writers for examiner.com and automotive.com have linked to my site in their articles. I’ve never thought of either as a content farm, but perhaps the writers I know are the exception rather than the norm at these sites.
The forum I referred you to has many people complaining about ehow, which is singled out as an exception rather than the norm in the article you linked to.
Another practical and understandable ‘mini-course’ to keep those of us who are small biz owners in the know about the latest on the tech front. Thanks!
It has been interesting reading about these changes Catherine. I have always had good traffic from Google and since the change traffic has increased and the page rank stayed the same.
I do feel sorry for those small business that were relying on traffic from ezine instead of building their own blogs.
This is great on paper, but I’ll wait and see what happens. I am glad though, that google is taking these steps, because it’s time quality trumps all else. This has a potential to help my industry so I’m waiting with hope.
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I am excited and petrified at the same time. Can Google really get the new algorithm to help the right folks and penalize the bad ones? White Hat SEO is great, Black Hat SEO is not acceptable. I do not think all of the “bad sites” are created equally.
Rob
Like your article Catherine as well as what Google’s algorithmic adjustment. Have never written articles to please search engines since it ruins them. According to Websitegrader I have gained a bit from Googles changes. Let’s hope they can improve their adjustments so that companies like e.how don’t gain from them.
Catarina Alexon recently posted..Contaminated water kills more people than wars and violence
Thanks for highlighting this critical information, Catherine. As Google evolves to cut out those taking shortcuts to page rank and higher search engine ranking, others will unfortunately be adapting to game the new system. I do like Google’s newest (newest to me, anyway) feature where you can block all results from a particular domain.
Jana Quinn recently posted..Social Vending- How Pepsi Convinces Customers to Pay Its Marketing Tab
Thanks for your visit Jana. My thoughts are Google’s algorithm is becoming much too smart to game. Eventually, all we’ll ever see is original content.
It should be noted Google constantly undertakes all the necessary actions to cope with people providing not unique content or content of low quality. So, summarizing contnet quality guidelines I would like to say that now content writers have to focus rather on quality of content than on quantity of written articles.
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Hi Catherine, I don’t know how I missed this one! I have never been one to pay as much attention as I should to SEO – I have always just concentrated on the value of what I write or make a video about to the end user. So if this is a dumb question, you will understand why! What happens if a link farm picks up your content and you had nothing to do with it? YOU get penalized by Google but you didn’t actually do anything? I have seen some backlinks in my analytics that I didn’t put there. What can we do?