Google Algorithm change… again
Death, Taxes & Google Algorithm changes, the three constants of life. This one is going to hurt a lot of people who make money from ad networks and whilst this change has probably been in the works for a while, I still blame JC Penney .
On the Google Webmaster Central Blog today Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, and Matt Cutts Principal Engineer, announced that an algorithm change is being rolled out that will affect 11.8% of searches. That’s massive. The reason for the algorithm change, as always is to improve the quality of the search results, specifically to down grade low quality sites. These are sites that are basically copying content from other sites or “low value add” whatever that means.
A Good Thing
This is a good thing for users & business. As I’ve always said, don’t worry about trying to trick Google. Just be more relevant for a particular phrase than the no.1 result and you SHOULD be fine. There are exceptions to this as we saw with the JC Penney example but by and large that basic formula still works. The problem for a lot of people is how do you become more “relevant”? Again I look to Google. Matt Cutts continually says produce good content that is useful to users. If users like it they will probably link to it and those links become votes for your pages. It’s one of the reasons I have a blog but certainly not the only one. In recent times there seems to be more and more useless content in the index as the use of techniques like “article spinning” grow in popularity. Article spinning is the process of taking one article then using software to rewrite the same thing fifty different ways and publish it on fifty different sites with a backlink to your target site. Quite often the content will end up as complete gibberish.This algorithm change will see sites like those disappear from the index. As I pointed out a couple of days ago, back link counts in webmaster tools looked as though they had been affected by an algorithm change.
Gnashing of teeth
As mostof the sites (not all) that fall into Google’s definition of low quality sites exist to generate revenue from either ad impressions or ad clicks, there will be a lot of people very upset with this change as they see revenue sources dry up overnight. It’s unclear at this stage how directory sites in market verticals will be affected.I would expect if a directory has unique content for more than 80% of each of its pages it should be fine. Those that exist from purely replicating a data feed that is published at multiple domains will have a problem though. In essence if your site is not providing value and unique content, get out of the pool.
Chrome’s Personal Blocklist
Google have said that whilst they have not used the data “gathered” (which is interesting in and of itself) from their new Personal Blocklist plugin for their browser Chrome, they have cross checked the new algorithm results with the blocklist data and it addresses 84% of user concerns. The plugin allows users to block whole domains coming up in their search results. This means we won’t just be seeing individual pages being weeded out but whole domains as well.
The algorithm is currently being rolled out in the US and the rest of the world will follow. I’d guestimate based on previous roll outs, Australia will be 4 to 6 weeks down the track.Love to know what you’re seeing.
In case you missed the show this week in the drop off of backlinks we’re seeing. I believe this is now part of the change just announced.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
