Google announced a substantial change to their search algorithm four days ago. Usually Google’s search algorithm changes are much smaller but this time the change impacts 11.8% of Googles search queries. This is in alignment with Google’s goal of ensuring that they only return the most relevant of content. Google are targeting low quality sites which provide little information to users and that copy content from other websites. “Content farms” seem to be a key target.
According to Wikipedia, the term Content Farm is used “to describe a company that employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines. Their main goal is to generate advertising revenue through attracting reader page views. Articles in content farms have been found to contain identical passages across several media sources, leading to questions about the sites placing search engine optimization goals over factual relevance.”
Interestingly, Ezine Articles seem to be one of the most affected sites but are also one of the few article directories that are very strict on the content that they accept. Perhaps Google’s objection is more related to the fact that sites like ezine articles main source of income appear to be making money via AdSense. Perhaps if Ezine Articles charged users to add content and retained their quality guidelines rather than gain their main source of income from AdSense then they would have fared better in this latest change. I am merely speculating here but if they charged user fees for article submission then the article quality would improve even further.
In any case, Ezine have announced that traffic to their site was down 11.5% on Thursday and over 35% on Friday. To this end, Ezine Articles are considering making a number of changes. These include:
– Adding No Follow to resource box (this one now appears to be taken off the table)
– Adding a further 20% rejection rate to the already 40%
– Taking off some ads for better user experience (increase in CTR’s)
– Possibly not allowing content that is duplicated anywhere on the Internet
– Possibly making 400 words minimum
You can check out their blog post on the impact of Google Search Algorithm changes. Other sites impacted include:
- Wisegeek
- Suite101
- Hubpages
- Buzzle
- Associated Content
- Articlesbase
You can see a list of some of the major sites impacted by Google Search Algorithm changes here.
However, what is clear is that there are some major lessons to be learned from this change. These include:
- Don’t rely on one source to drive traffic to your site
- Continue to vary your links
- Use fresh relevant content
No comments yet.