Well Google are well and truly on the SEO war path when it comes to cleaning up their search results. A whole raft of recent announcements and actions leave little doubt that they mean business. First of all came the war of words with Matt Cutts of Google writing on the Google blog: "As "pure webspam" has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to "content farms," which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content." This was rapidly followed by the Scraper update targeting plagiarised content. Cutts says: "This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content."
Shortly after came the announcement of the Google Chrome extension that allows users to block any sites they consider as low-quality. In effect the extension means that you are now able to filter your own content. Though criticised for being a reactive, user driven and manual system the argument is that the information collected will likely be integrated into the Google algorithm. In fairness to Google the very recent 'Farmer' update seems to back up this point.
Only live so far in the U.S. The Farmer update has taken a big swipe at the content mills churning out shallow and low quality content significantly reducing the number of top placements for many. Google report that the changes has already had a noticeable impact on nearly 12% of queries. The idea of course is to free up the organic search returns for quality content.
And Google's efforts to rid their search results of invalid or gamed returns haven't stopped there. Grassed up by the New York Times American retail giant JC Penney have felt the force of Google's wrath over the last couple of weeks for a less than white hat link building policy.
Guilty of buying their way to the top of Google on dozens of search terms in the pre Christmas online retail frenzy, JC Penney has now found many of it's page rankings in free fall as Google manually re-calibrate their positioning. What had they done to deserve such severe treatment? As The NY Times reported: "There are links to JCPenney.com’s dresses page on sites about diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminium sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, fishing, Adobe Flash, glass shower doors, jokes and dentists — and the list goes on." Not big and not clever. Other than clever in the sense that such high positioning across so many search terms boosted their Christmas sales in a highly competitive and recession ravaged market place.
Exposed so publicly Google had little choice but to censure the company who straight away went and fired their SEO company claiming complete ignorance to all the underhand link buying shenanigans. Hmmm.
But JC Penney haven't been the only ones caught breaking Google guidelines. The Wall Street Journal have this week reported on another major retailer: Overstock.com. penalized by Google for links it had encouraged on university websites: "The incident, according to Overstock, stemmed in part from its practice of encouraging websites of colleges and universities to post links to Overstock pages so that students and faculty could receive discounts on the shopping site. Overstock said it discontinued the program on Feb. 10, before hearing from Google, but said some university webmasters have been slow to remove the links."
Ouch.
Whilst there has been talk of Google getting tough on gaming example of censure in action have been relatively few and far between. It seems to be heating up out there on several fronts and the message is clear. Play by the rules or face the threat of having your online profile severely compromised in the form of search penalties.
Why take chances? Play nice, play white hat. Build your success on quality content, authentic links and increasingly important, on a strong social reputation. Why run the risk of upsetting Google and missing out on all the success that sustainable internet marketing can offer you?
Contact our SEO specialists at TOP PAGE for quality link building strategies.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Google 'Farmer' Update - Top 5 Content Farm Losers
In a move that SEO though leader Danny Sullivan labels the 'Farmer' update on his Google Forecloses On Content Farms With "Farmer" Algorithm Update analysis, Google has this week come down hard on the very many sites out there propagating less than useful content. The Farmer update is the latest in a flurry of relevance enhancing initiatives rolled out by Google over recent weeks. Activities that also include the 'Scraper' update (credit Sullivan again for the name), the release of the Chrome extension to black flag low grade sites and the punishment of both US retailers JC Penney and Overstock for flouting Google guidelines when it comes to paid links.
Referring specifically to the Farmer update Google's Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts wrote on the Google blog: "Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.
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.
Though currently only live in the States, the Farmer update has sent out a crystal clear message to content providers and SEO companies – you better make it good. Whilst of course quality is often a subjective matter and quality can be tough for an algorithm to define – To quote Google engineer nicknamed moultano on Hacker News: "The central issue is that it's very difficult to make changes that sacrifice "on-topic-ness" for "good-ness" that don't make the results in general worse," the issue is clear. If you choose to sail too close to Google's new definitions of poor quality content then be prepared for the consequences. Analysis of the fall out from the Farmer update by Aaron Wall at SEOBook reveals for example that the Top Five Content Farm Losers have been;
1. ezinearticles.com
2. associatedcontent.com
3. suite101.com
4. hubpages.com
5. buzzle.com
Good riddance to bad rubbish many of you may feel. After all who hasn't been lured onto an ad infested page of trashy, empty and virtually meaningless content only to click away once the charade had been revealed? The combined time wasted webwide on content farm vapour must total countless human livetimes..
Oddly enough one of the highest profile flouters of Google's quality content dive Demand Media's eHow.com seems to have actually benefited. Whether these gains are sustainable remains to be seen however as there's plenty here to come out in the wash.
For quality original content to drive true visit : SEO Copywrting
Perhaps this will be one algorithm update that the SEO community can (largely) agree is a good one. With less weak content clogging up the top search positions there's more room for well conceived, well crafted web pages. Work of quality and worth that genuinely deserves to be found. Good for users and good for ethical SEOs basing their campaigns on delivering sites offering genuine content to meet genuine searches.
Referring specifically to the Farmer update Google's Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts wrote on the Google blog: "Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.
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.
Though currently only live in the States, the Farmer update has sent out a crystal clear message to content providers and SEO companies – you better make it good. Whilst of course quality is often a subjective matter and quality can be tough for an algorithm to define – To quote Google engineer nicknamed moultano on Hacker News: "The central issue is that it's very difficult to make changes that sacrifice "on-topic-ness" for "good-ness" that don't make the results in general worse," the issue is clear. If you choose to sail too close to Google's new definitions of poor quality content then be prepared for the consequences. Analysis of the fall out from the Farmer update by Aaron Wall at SEOBook reveals for example that the Top Five Content Farm Losers have been;
1. ezinearticles.com
2. associatedcontent.com
3. suite101.com
4. hubpages.com
5. buzzle.com
Good riddance to bad rubbish many of you may feel. After all who hasn't been lured onto an ad infested page of trashy, empty and virtually meaningless content only to click away once the charade had been revealed? The combined time wasted webwide on content farm vapour must total countless human livetimes..
Oddly enough one of the highest profile flouters of Google's quality content dive Demand Media's eHow.com seems to have actually benefited. Whether these gains are sustainable remains to be seen however as there's plenty here to come out in the wash.
For quality original content to drive true visit : SEO Copywrting
Perhaps this will be one algorithm update that the SEO community can (largely) agree is a good one. With less weak content clogging up the top search positions there's more room for well conceived, well crafted web pages. Work of quality and worth that genuinely deserves to be found. Good for users and good for ethical SEOs basing their campaigns on delivering sites offering genuine content to meet genuine searches.
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