Article Sites - I see fewer ranking now

[driller41]

Is it me or am I seeing less article sites ranking in serps nowadays, 3-6 months ago there seemed more such sites ranking but I am not seeing these now - any thoughts?

[Seb7]

I'm not surprised. As they are a lot like link directories.

[moehits]

Hmm, has anyone noticed sites that use articles for links drop in rankings?

[eltercerhombre]

Moehits question "is" the question (at leats for me). I do not care about article sites, but I do for sites with 90% of links from article sites.

In plain: ¿does links from articles still have an effect on SERPS?

[almighty monkey]

A lot of 'article' sites have very little actual genuine valiable content that any human being would read. They exist purely for SEO purposes.

If nobody is reading these articles, no-one cares about the link contained therein. Therefore why would Google care and promote your site based on that link?

As much as the modern day relevence of pagerank is debated, this is a classic example of what the PR system was fundementally designed to filter out.

Also I wouldn't be surprised if many of the big article websites haven't been filtered out manually as well, as they are essentially just big old spam directories.

[moehits]

There was a thread back in July I believe that mentioned sites that relied heavily on articles for links dropped in rankings, has anyone seen recent evidence of further devaluing of articles?

[MrSavage]

It makes sense. Article sites became an excuse to come up with an article. The article secondary to the actual quality if that makes sense. I'm going to write a rubbish article about my site, and gain some favoritism from Google. Not. Perhaps before but it was becoming sickening quite honestly. Not exactly what I would classify as a quality search result. As with most things that become trendy for SEO, Google will eventually turn it into fools gold.

[aristotle]

There's a lot of worthless content on the web put there for the sole purpose of influencing Google's rankings. Some people might even say that Google is responsible for it.

[outland88]

I haven’t noticed one bit of decline in article sites especially in Health sections. I can’t see Google divorcing themselves from them because many are well ranked Adsense sites that make Google money. File a DMCA and you will see Google has a pretty cozy relationship with many of the article sites.

Bottom line the perception is they still provide juice to a site so they will continue to flood the results.