Last week, in response to growing criticism of low quality websites in its search results, Google implemented a major update to its ranking algorithm.
Google claims that this update, unofficially named the Farmer update* (as it was intended to reduce the presence of low quality content farms in Google’s search results), has affected the results showing for almost 12% of all search queries.
There has been some good analysis in the search community about which sites have been impacted and why. Speculation abound about what exactly this algorithm update looks at on a website. Some say it might be the ratio of original content to advertising on a webpage. As usual Google is quiet about the specifics, saying only that this update aims to reward sites that publish high quality content.
However, the Farmer update doesn’t seem to have succeeded in weeding out all content farms from Google’s search result. Demand Media’s eHow site, long considered one of the worst culprits when it comes to low quality content, actually seems to have benefited from the update with an increase in traffic from Google.
Nonetheless the message is clear: Google wants websites to publish unique, relevant and quality content. If your website is seeing a decline in search traffic from Google from February 23rd onward, you might need to look at the quality of what you are publishing online.
And of course it never hurts to have a chat with our SEO experts here at Pierce Communications.
*Note: in a recent interview with Wired, Google has revealed its own internal codename for this update is Panda.
nice piece Barry
and in fairness nothing more frustrating than trawling through useless and irrelevant info – to find there’s better content on page 4. Wish youtube would do the same.
I was going to say 3 there
peter
Thanks for your comment Peter, and for the link from your Sodcast.
Yes bad quality content is a big problem on the web nowadays. Let’s hope Google’s attempts to weed it out from their search results are successful.