I think it is timely that i post what i know now from my experience of working with 3k sites across many verticals.
Normally I would keep a back seat on any help or observations but the reason I have decided to give a little bit more is that my friend is stuck in house arrest in Bahrain where there is martial law and I feel that anything we are grappling with is small time compared to this situation.
As a result I have decided to give an insight into what I do and how it is working now.
Firstly, my disclosure is that I run 4k websites on many different verticals.
Secondly after this update traffic is up a lot.
Thirdly, the reason is content - unique content.
We have 250k unique articles and this has been rewarded in the update.
However, this comes with a caveat - it is the percentage of unique content in relation to the website that is important allied to the link strength you have.
So if you have thin or copied content that will be evaluated on your site as a percentage of your unique content.
This will hit affiliates, and any sites that have their content scraped.
Thin content will rank if you build links to it - but why bother.
To me this is the death of affliates - and to be honest that is great from my point of view!
Anyway, you need loads of links and unique content on every important page if you want traffic now.
