Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Matt Cutts "In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can't divulge specific signals because we don't want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics."
Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 4:31 pm (utc) on Apr 25, 2012]
[edit reason] added quotes - updated link [/edit]
These are my observations.
Google needs to get their act together or their stock will take a dive after the Facebook IPO. The search results in Google have been going downhill since last Fall if you ask me. Google Plus is nothing to get excited about and the results in the iPhone APP is horrible when you want somewhere local. Maybe the engineers need to start doing something more productive for the health of the company?
Did Google buy too many links to themselves? They don't rank in the top 40 for 'search engines'.
CainIV has done an excellent job of outlining the signals required earlier in this thread.
I recall in the good old days, GoogleGuy use to visit us here on WebmasterWorld and contribute on threads discussing Google updates. I wish to see Matt Cutts doing the same.
@fred9989
(apart from those with 1000s of obvious spammy links from Chinese government websites, which Google seems to have missed. Oh dear. What a successful algorithm that must be.)
If you know of spam sites I would strongly suggest you report them to Google via the link which Matt Cutts tweeted today [goo.gl...]
Matt Cutts also tweeted today: "we're definitely interested [in spam reports] and we'll be reading the feedback from the forms."
The only definitive correlation I see in rankings and this update is the effect of branding and inbound links to brands.
-Exact match domains are not all penalized
-Affiliate websites are not all penalized
-Lots of sites with poor links are penalized, yet some are not
Most brands have:
- A higher value proposition
- Well written content
- Social and community stickiness
- Signals which support a logical company
- Naturally built inbound links
Eventually there will easily be enough non-generic brands to cover page one Google for almost any known vertical. I believe that is the direction we are headed.
[edited by: goodroi at 3:28 pm (utc) on Apr 30, 2012]
They said on 24th, the algo will hit the search engine in the next a couple of days. Is that "anti-spam" algo now active
To oppose mhansen and just to show different situation:
Site that haven't been edited since late March:
Example Results -
Old page1 ranked 1st on Apr 23rd.
Old page1 ranked 100ish on 24th
Old page1 ranked 6th on 25th.
old page1 ranked 8-10 on 25-27th
Old page1 ranks 100+ today
In my opinion, if it's not broken - don't fix it. It was alright for 5 years to rank in top1, I don't believe site just become bad overnight.
I guess we just have to wait until serps settle down..
[edited by: goodroi at 3:26 pm (utc) on Apr 30, 2012]
[edit reason] No Specific Keywords [/edit]
All my competitors who were using
a. links in spun articles.
b. links on junking #*$! made for PR sites.
have been smashed. In some niches, its most of the top 30.
