Google Algorithm Changes – More Value on Good Content
6Google have announced on their blog the release of a very significant algorithm change from the 24th February 2011, I can’t believe they waited until I went skiing to make the change :-). The statement on their blog states that 11.8% of the queries they receive will be affected. Now for Google that is a pretty big number.
[ad name=”Adsense1″]The key points of what they have tried to achieve are as follows:
- To reduce the ranking of low quality sites, i.e. that copy content from other sites or are not considered to provide useful information
- Provide better ranking for high quality sites with original content
The changes have been rolled out in the United States first but will eventually migrate to the rest of the world. There are also going to be further changes as they learn from the changes they have made, but with the same objectives in mind.
You can read the full account of the changes under the title Finding More High-Quality Sites in Search
It is worth noting that the feature of Google Chrome that allows users to block certain domain names from appearing in search results is being used to compare the results from Internet users of that function against the new algorithm results. Google are happy to announce that this comparison provides a strong indication of user benefits by matching around 84% of the top sites that have been manually blocked when using the new algorithm. In other words the sites that people have indicated to Google that they do not want to see in search results are being screened out by the new algorithm to the tune of 84%.
See what the press is saying about Google’s algorithm change.
It is really amazing to see the results of the Panda/Farmer update. A lot of e-commerce sites got smacked due to similar product descriptions, which is a tough call. On the other hand, a lot of content farms have fallen off the map. So, like anything Google rolls out, pieces were effective, and others were not!
That is tough when you actually have similar products, there are only so many ways they can be described, and actually for anyone looking for a choice of the same product they would have been not have been particularly happy if they could not find them. At the end of the day people just want to find what they are looking for easily and if Google are trying to deliver that then you can’t really blame them, it is their core business.
I like that you talk about the chrome extension to block pages.
Even though they didn’t use it for this update, I think that fact that Matt Cutts made such as point of mentioning it is definitely an indication of things to come!
Yes I agree, the fact that they are making comparisons between their algorithm results and what actual users are blocking suggests that the algorithm doesn’t quite do the job yet, but they would seriously like it to. I guess the only thing you can say about that is watch this space.
These changes will surely have advantages and disadvantages. But it will benefit all the sites that are doing their best to provide quality information and trying hard to be on the top of the ranking. it can also be a good benefit for browsers or internet users.
I think this is the Panda update. I believe that this time, Google favored Quality. The panda update likes large and informative articles and they still requires mandatory pages like about us, contact us and terms of agreement page.