Welcome to WebmasterWorld Guest from 52.91.176.251
Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Google’s announcement did not mention content farms. But Mr. Cutts has spoken in recent weeks about the problem and said Google was working on algorithm changes to fix it. “In general, there are some content farms that I think it would be fair to call spam, in the sense that the quality is so low-quality that people complain,” he said in a recent interview.
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. [googleblog.blogspot.com...]
Demand Media Response:
[demandmedia.com...]How our content reaches the consumer – whether it’s through direct visits, social media referrals, apps or search – has always been important to and monitored closely by us. We also recognize that major search engines like Google have and will continue to make frequent changes. We have built our business by focusing on creating the useful and original content that meets the specific needs of today’s consumer. So naturally we applaud changes search engines make to improve the consumer experience – it’s both the right thing to do and our focus as well.
Today, Google announced an algorithm change to nearly 12% of their U.S. query results. As might be expected, a content library as diverse as ours saw some content go up and some go down in Google search results.This is consistent with what Google discussed on their blog post. It’s impossible to speculate how these or any changes made by Google impact any online business in the long term – but at this point in time, we haven’t seen a material net impact on our Content & Media business.
[edited by: indyank at 6:22 am (utc) on Feb 25, 2011]
joined:Dec 29, 2003
posts:5428
votes: 0
joined:Dec 29, 2003
posts:5428
votes: 0
Is that a backhanded acknowledgement that the previous algo did/does not reward high quality sites?
[edited by: tristanperry at 9:09 am (utc) on Feb 25, 2011]
joined:Dec 29, 2003
posts:5428
votes: 0
That's bold. I wouldn't even consider doing that. Of course they don't target Adsense sites per se, but content farms. IMO Adsense has nothing to do with it.
If this update isn't affecting them, it is because they are considered to be good by google but not because those pages are of good quality.
Finally we have it here, the answer to what google were referring to as content farms
"BLOGS that aren't big enough and using adsense"
One point: The change happens in US first, and only then for the rest of the world over a period of time.
A Statement About Search Engine Algorithm Changes
It’s impossible to speculate how these or any changes made by Google impact any online business in the long term – but at this point in time, we haven’t seen a material net impact on our Content & Media business.
I think content farms have become such a general term that everyone is just throwing around. You know content farms could be automatic, non-human content that scrapes other people’s articles like ours, steals them, and publishes them. So, I mean, I don’t know what they define content farms as. We don’t see ourselves as one.
If you talk to Google and we talk to Google all the time you will see that Google, if they have a problem with somebody like JC Penney they’re pretty obvious about it. They specifically say it. If they have a problem, they come out and talk about it.
What we create is created by consumer demand and touched by 14 humans.
That could happen but it would be against their best interest and the consumer’s best interest. It’s kind of like Zynga just got a $9 billion valuation. Facebook could turn them off at any time. The iPhone could have been turned off by Verizon or AT&T (NYSE: T). There are a lot of synergistic partnerships that make sense for both parties that last a very long time.