Google's AdSense Farm Update Was a Re-ranking - NOT a Penalty

[TheMadScientist]

I know quite a few of us have said the changes in the SERPs related the AdSense Farm Update is not a penalty, and I've tried to explain it, but there are too many threads to get it in all of them and not everyone reads every post, so I'm going to go ahead and post this in it's own thread so people can link to it rather than trying to explain the difference if they would like.

PENALTY CHANGES - how they work

BEFORE PENALTIES
#1 = will get penalty
#2
#3 = will get penalty
#4
#5

Every result with no penalty just moves up, filling in the gaps that were opened.
They all stay in the same relationship with each other.

AFTER PENALTIES
new #1 = was #2
new #2 = was #4
new #3 = was #5
new #4 = was #6
new #5 = was #7

RE-RANKING CHANGES - how they work

BEFORE RE-RANKING
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5

All the results now get shuffled, some go up different amounts and some go down:

AFTER RE-RANKING
new #1 = was #3 [up 2]
new #2 = was #21 [up 19]
new #3 = was #2 [down 1]
new #4 = was #1 [down 3]
new #5 = was #11 [up 6]

So there's a big difference between a penalty change and a re-ranking.
If you only look at drops you don't see the bigger picture of what happened.

[edited by: tedster at 7:47 pm (utc) on Mar 1, 2011]

[TheMadScientist]

Please, let us know if the re-consideration request helps, and remember the difference in traffic according to that old AOL data between position 2 and 5 could easily account for the difference in traffic you're seeing...

On our side (the traffic data side) it sounds like a HUGE drop in rankings, but on the 'most often clicked results' side of things it doesn't take much of a drop in the rankings for your traffic to nose dive ... Hope you don't ever get stuck in spot number 9 ... According to the AOL click data it's the worst spot on the 1st page. (<--- Seriously ... Humor ---> Maybe we could get them to remove it from the results? lol)

It really doesn't sound like a very steep penalty (or a penalty at all) to me when you think about the traffic differences between clicks on the results, especially if you dropped to the second page for some terms. If you were penalized, say 30 positions site-wide, your drop would be closer to 99.9% IOW: You wouldn't have any traffic.

IMO Your site just doesn't rank as well as it used to, but that's not necessarily because it was penalized. It's just ranked using a different method than it was before and a change in rankings from 'average' in the top 10 to 'average' 11 through 20 for some 'money' terms is a huge, gigantic, enormous click difference.

It actually sounds like you dropped from 1 to 3 or 2 to 5 for a bunch of terms going by the AOL data ... If we're calling that a penalty I'm taking my bat and ball and going outside! (I'm already home, so I can't 'go' there. lol)

[trakkerguy]

Of the three pages that showed gains

Content_ed - Anything different about those 3 pages vs those that lost rank? Backlinks, unique text, avg time of visit, etc?

[Ummon]

I play in the Adult arena. An area notorious for breaking Google guidelines. I have been a lurker for quite some time. Finally signed up

I think you are right about the re-ranking but something else is going on. My flagship site got whacked back in the Late January update. No dupe content, nothing funny really going on. I went from page 2 to page 45 for my main keyword. Stayed that way for a month. Then yesterday BAM back on page 1 and 2. 500+ keywords vs 140 something.

Meanwhile another one of my sites which had the top spot for at least 3 years got whacked in this update, Page 1 to page 5. Traffic in the US 60% down. No dupe content, no farming. 100% unique. The top in the SERPS is a TGP which is crap, A topsite and an askmen article.

None of my sites obviously have adsense. I have been wondering if it has to do with affiliate links (my flagship has quite a few) even though they are no followed. At this point I am wondering what the hell Google really thinks they are doing. The SERPS in my niches are horrible. Lets just hope my rankings on my flagship stay that way

[TheMadScientist]

For those who haven't seen it:
Searches: 19,434,540 .. 100%

01 8,220,278 42.30% n/a n/a
02 2,316,738 11.92% -71.82% -71.82%
03 1,640,751 08.44% -29.46% -80.04%
04 1,171,642 06.03% -28.59% -85.75%
05 0,943,667 04.86% -19.46% -88.52%
06 0,774,718 03.99% -17.90% -90.58%
07 0,655,914 03.37% -15.34% -92.95%
08 0,579,196 02.98% -11.69% -92.95%
09 0,549,196 02.83% -05.18% -93.32%
10 0,577,325 02.97% -05.12% -92.98%
11 0,127,688 00.66% -77.88% -98.45%
12 0,108,555 00.66% -14.98% -98.68%
13 0,101,802 00.52% -06.22% -98.76%
14 00,94,221 00.48% -07.45% -98.85%
15 00,91,020 00.47% -03.40% -98.89%
16 00,75,006 00.39% -17.59% -99.09%
17 00,70,054 00.36% -06.60% -99.15%
18 00,65,832 00.34% -06.03% -99.20%
19 00,62,141 00.32% -05.61% -99.24%
20 00,58,382 00.30% -06.05% -99.29%

[TheMadScientist]

According to the chart above an average ranking change from #3 to #5 would drop traffic by 42.5% ... IMO You can't go by traffic numbers to determine a penalty, because dropping from 3 to 5 on average is NOT a stinking penalty ... Really, not every ranking change or drop in traffic is a penalty.

Content_Ed I'm not directing this at you, but more the EXTREME overuse of the word penalty associated with a ranking or traffic change ... It's not you specifically, there's just too much calling a change a penalty that goes on, so don't take this post at all personally. I come across like an a** sometimes, but that's why we have tedsters around and I'm usually trying to help people understand more, so hopefully you know I'm just trying to point things out so people can learn more about what's going on and we can all stay 'on the same page' a bit better, because otherwise things get all jumbled and we can't figure out what's going on nearly as well.

[Jane_Doe]

stinking penalty ... Really, not every ranking change or drop in traffic is a penalty.

So what do you call going from #1 for some lucrative terms to nowhere to be found?

I don't think anyone is calling a drop of a few positions or a drop from first page to second page a penalty.

[TheMadScientist]

My opinion...

I think you have to look at the situation with a big picture view to understand what happened, so:
Is it possible there were some type(s) of penalties assessed?

Sure, but that's not what the whole of the change was or what the difference is for most rankings ... For most it's a different scoring system ... Could there be penalties from that scoring system, sure there could, but was the change on a whole simply a new penalty system?

No, it's a new scoring system ... Meaning much more complex than something like the duplicate content 'filtering' which causes a (everyone's favorite word for a page not being included or not ranking as high as it did before) 'penalty' to be given to a page with duplicate content and keeps it from showing in the results.

Would I say you could have a page or site penalized?
Yeah, sure you could and you've been around long enough to know the difference and what you're looking at, but it seems like EVERYTHING is being called a penalty lately and that's not what most people are looking at, so if it keeps being called a penalty and most people are looking for the 'new penalty' to fix and get their rankings back, imo they're going to be scratching their heads and chasing their tales and quite possibly fixing things that aren't broken, which could totally move them in the wrong direction.

Hopefully what I'm saying makes sense to someone besides me...

[Jane_Doe]

I don't think most people are calling everything a penalty. There is everything from minor shifts in ranking to major penalties being accessed and everything in between.

But unless you have a better word for it, overnight drops from #1 to nowhere, in the "highly competitive areas", usually means a penalty.

[TheMadScientist]

I'm not arguing with you on that at all on a page dropping like that being called a 'penalty' or 'filter' ... But what people need to understand is: Unlike the duplicate content filtering this new scoring system is way more than simply a system that asses penalties...

Calling the rankings from this new system a penalty is imo a gross understatement.

[Jane_Doe]

The title of this post is "Google's AdSense Farm Update Was a Re-ranking - NOT a Penalty"

On my sites I see clear signs of penalties, and the action to remove a penalty is not necessarily the same as what you need to do to just move up in rankings.

[TheMadScientist]

Well here I'll re-title it in this post for you:

Google's AdSense Farm Update Was a Re-ranking - NOT SIMPLY a Penalty System

[tedster]

Time will almost always remove a penalty. Unless the offense was extremely egregious, Google thinks of a penalty like a "time out." Matt Cutts recently described that process [youtube.com] in a new video.

Time alone will not undo a re-ranking. A re-ranking is an algorithm factor. In that case we need to understand what the algo measures and why our site's signal is weak in that area.

I'm certain this is a re-ranking done by a new algorithm process. Google may well tweak that algorithm - in fact, they definitely will. But other than such a change, whatever the algorithm decides for the new ranking of any URL/query pair, that's the way it is.

[TheMadScientist]

Thanks for inserting the English version of what I've been trying to say again tedster ... I appreciate it!

[Jane_Doe]

Time will almost always remove a penalty.

Only if you fix what caused the penalty in the first place.

[tedster]

I don't want to have a confrontation about this, but I do feel there's an essential insight in the opening post. Here's an attempt at a restatement.

The Farm Update did not find sites that were violating a guideline and give them a penalty. Instead, it tried to measure the quality of page content. It now generates rankings based on folding that additional ingredient into the full recipe.

In short, an automated Page Quality score now has been added to the Relevance Score as a new factor in the algorithm, a new and previously unmeasured signal.

Some sites benefited from this. I now know of one case where across the board there was a traffic gain of 20%. Even though some of their rankings did go down, the bulk of them went up. The ones that went down did not get a penalty, they were just re-ranked.

[tedster]

The first time I heard of re-ranking was in the context of a LocalRank paper from Google - in 2002. The idea presented there was this:

1. Take an initial set of the top 1,000 URLs, scored by the relevance algorithm.

2. Now analyze those 1,000 results by how they inter-link within the set - disregarding any links from outside the set.

You've now got a new number, which you can apply by re-ranking the original set of 1,000 pages. No new pages will come into the mix, and no results can be thrown out either.

There were further mentions of re-ranking in many patents that followed over the years - for example, in the Phrase-Based Indexing for Spam Detection patent in 2006.

[Jane_Doe]

I don't want to have a confrontation about this, but I do feel there's an essential insight in the opening post. Here's an attempt at a restatement.

I think we can just agree to disagree. I have a number of pages I'm pretty sure have spam penalties. Personally, I think the title of this thread and the last restatement are both incorrect.

When the new algo change went in I have certain pages that stopped ranking at all. I'm looking at a variety of sites, and only some of the pages on only two of the sites took a hit and I think I know why.

If I'm right I can fix them and they will come back eventually. Only time will tell.

[TheMadScientist]

I'm not going to argue this point any more, because you're obviously not getting what I'm saying Jane_Doe but I am going to try to clarify for other readers, even though I think I've been fairly clear in my previous posts:

I think it's entirely possible (likely) when the new scoring system was introduced and the re-ranking took place penalties were also added, so I do not doubt Jane_Doe has a penalty on a couple of her pages, especially if they're spammy, but the whole of the change was much more than a new penalty introduction and the changes most people are seeing are NOT a penalty, but rather the result of a different scoring system.

[tedster]

I have certain pages that stopped ranking at all.

You're right - that does sound like a penalty. The algo itself is not removing pages completely, only ranking them lower.

Anyone who was hit with a penalty around the same time that the new algorithm rolled out will have a challenge sorting that out.

[hotelmarketing]

I have a popular trusted site in two competitive areas. The site is broken into sub-domains. Some of the sub-domains increased in google ranking, some stayed the same, and others decrease. One particular subdomain drop 25% in goolge traffic. The content was unique but I wouldn’t consider the content quality. The only section of the site that saw gains in google traffic was written by an extremely knowledge individual in the field and was a former senior executive in the industry of a fortune 500 company. He is also serves as an expert witness for major industry lawsuits and an extremely capable writer. The only pages on the site that saw an increase in ranking were the ones written by him. C+ plus content no longer ranks as it used to in google even if it is unique.

The site I am referring to is not a travel so don’t let my user name misguide you. Left that vertical years ago.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Welcome to the forums hotelmarketing,

Interesting situation. I wonder if your visitors spend longer on the higher quality content pages, and/or perhaps better quality backlinks in recognition of the content?

... rather than Google deduced something about the writing style from some fanciful text analysis.

[walkman]

Anyone who was hit with a penalty around the same time that the new algorithm rolled out will have a challenge sorting that out.

It's possible that some penalties were dished out, it is a major index /calculations so the penalties might have been normal ones.
Jane, do you have a fresh tag?
Do you rank for your "domain.com" or "domain"?
When you search for site:domain.com, is your index page in the first place?

The only section of the site that saw gains in google traffic was written by an extremely knowledge individual in the field and was a former senior executive in the industry of a fortune 500 company. He is also serves as an expert witness for major industry lawsuits and an extremely capable writer. The only pages on the site that saw an increase in ranking were the ones written by him. C+ plus content no longer ranks as it used to in google even if it is unique.

There's no way google can tell the difference, no offense. Maybe his articles got links and others don't. eHow proves my theory and I have gotten an increase on 2 very thin sites (content there is thin by default, not much you can add)

[Jane_Doe]

Walkman, the two sites in question were not penalized site wide. I still have Google traffic for thousands of search terms daily between those two sites.

There were just many pages on these two particular sites that got penalized for some main terms. The rest of the pages on those two sites and the other sites just got reshuffled a bit. I think I know what is wrong with the pages. It is just that for years they were ranking so well anyway I decided to let them be and just rewrite them when the time comes, which I guess is now. I had to rewrite some of the other pages on these sites from time to time over the years and so far they usually bounced back.

I see some of my competitors are in the same boat since last Thursday, so I don't think my penalties are unconnected to the major algorithm change.

[tranquilito]

When you search for site:domain.com, is your index page in the first place?

My index page is on 4th position. First 3 places are internal pages

Do you rank for your "domain.com" or "domain"?

Yes

After the update I lost ~10-20 positions for some keywords, for others just 1-2 positions.


Is this a sign that the domain received a penalty ?

[walkman]

I see some signs of hope. I get some pretty good referrals (not steady obviously and my site:domain.com/* has added over 250 pages. The /*, for those that don't know, shows the pages outside of 'supplementals'

[LostOne]

So what's the difference? I don't quite understand that. I'm showing this

site:domain.com/* 980
site:domain.com 3,000

[econman]

I think the safest assumption is that Google is changing their ranking system to reduce the visibility of content they think their users will perceive as being of "low quality"

The Farm Update did not find sites that were violating a guideline and give them a penalty. Instead, it tried to measure the quality of page content.

More specifically,

...an automated Page Quality score now has been added to the Relevance Score as a new factor in the algorithm, a new and previously unmeasured signal.

The primary impact is that

C+ plus content no longer ranks as it used to in google even if it is unique.

But, there seems to be some indication that entire sites are losing ground, including pages that don't seem to be of unusually low quality. If so, perhaps the explanation is the secondary impact, or ripple effect, of the new recipe ingredient.

For instance, what if a site has a large number of C+ (and worse) quality pages, along with some real gems? Perhaps the low quality pages no longer pass as much strength through internal links to the A+ pages on the same site. In that case, a highly relevant page on that site could move down in the SERPs despite being of A+ quality (the problem is that it's lost the boost previously gained from all those internal links from "low quality" pages).

[scooterdude]

My take on this is,

Some google folk made up lists of sites they've decided are low quality

Compared the lists with some 3rd party feedback from their chrome extensions,

mapped the digital footprints of those that really top their list

revised their 'exceptions lists'


devised an algo filter to nuke the rankings of those sites,
and any sites that fit those digital footprints

[mrguy]

Compared the lists with some 3rd party feedback from their chrome extensions,

If that turns out to be true, then I can see a new method of bowling your competitors right of the game.

[rowtc2]

I agree mrguy.

There are a lot of third party services where users vote or mark as spam. What i saw there: "teams" of people trying to destroy competition.

Pay a few dollars and an automated program using different IPs and proxy servers will vote No for a specific site.

Instead comparing with Chrome extension, they better get data regarding user bahaviour on site.