Here's a specific query moultano:
"ikea malm bed"
before: <a href="http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=it&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&gl=it&q=ikea+malm+bed&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=2ce4b7de8d5212a" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...</a>
after: <a href="http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=us&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=ikea+malm+bed&cp=10&qe=aWtlYSBtYWxtIA&qesig=fzIiLYqoVn1cAbQyVOoeVw&pkc=AFgZ2tmunisp7QpCwTjGCATISMYyE9y37kDzV351Fx5dgHw2ZrcrUTs6-Xt15-j--gLXEptbaKjWHejsHvGbgwDrYX_IHa32Cg&pf=p&sclient=psy&safe=off&gl=us&aq=0&aqi=&aql=&oq=ikea+malm+&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=2ce4b7de8d5212a" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...</a><p>The ProductWiki page moves from rank 5 to 9 being beaten out by eHow and Scribd.<p>The ProductWiki page contains more than a dozen reviews and a slew of comments/discussions.<p>Seems like we got hit as a "low quality" site while scribd and eHow didn't. Amazing.
I don't know if it's live yet, but my concert listings site is now number one for a lot of common searches (philly concerts, philadelphia concerts).<p>It used to be like 2 or 3 pages down below a bunch of content farms, very glad about this.<p>Edit: Actually, now I'm number 4 for philadelphia and number 1 for Philly, still pretty happy though.
This could be very painful for the likes of Mahalo. I remember Jason Calcanis mentioning, perhaps when he first noted a change of direction for Mahalo to high-quality content, that he'll make sure Mahalo is the number one Google result for "how to cook a turkey" and similar queries, where they've spent hundreds of dollars (maybe more) on quality content, notably videos. I just Googled "how to cook a turkey", without quotes, and Mahalo is nowhere to be seen! Not sure if tha
t's a good thing or a bad thing, but the guys at Mahalo might just be freaking out right now.
So I started tracking rankings on 164 of eHow's top keywords (selected based on SEMRush report of their most-valuable, SearchVol * CPC).<p>Anyway, here's the downward movement since the algo started rolling out:<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+build+a+robot+from+scratch" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+build+a+robot+from+scr...</a> (-1 ranking)<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=eurotop+bed" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=eurotop+bed</a> (-1)<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=watch+live+cable+tv+online" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=watch+live+cable+tv+online</a> (-1)<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=find+answers+to+crossword+puzzles" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=find+answers+to+cro...</a> (-1)<p>So while this may have hit eHow to some degree, 4/164 doesn't seem like a massacre. That said, seoMoz only updates rankings weekly, so maybe next Wednesday will be a different story.
"best digital camera under 300"<p>Before:
<a href="http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=it&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=best+digital+camera+under+300&cp=27&qe=YmVzdCBkaWdpdGFsIGNhbWVyYSB1bmRlciAz&qesig=3LsmQ31FS23jTEL9E7L99A&pkc=AFgZ2tm6DJ2w_8nTzgPZUJe11cj6OaULhC5fy0gZI6XV5B9EiBet61SCz6Pma7odTe67IGIV3iSqLZ7eEs5NJLrotrtOy9gV6w&pf=p&sclient=psy&safe=off&gl=it&aq=0&aqi=&aql=&oq=best+digital+camera+under+3&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=2ce4b7de8d5212a" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...</a><p>After:
<a href="http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=us&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=best+digital+camera+under+300&cp=27&qe=YmVzdCBkaWdpdGFsIGNhbWVyYSB1bmRlciAz&qesig=qDMeK6vi7twIKTqFpKi0gQ&pkc=AFgZ2tlP2pTmaNtxuRMdgw8x7nJyJyH_jEFkEHYxFC3rlz1Shjh2WnGyBmmCFniXXDmW_--NtLI-uAE1Kmh-7-jZ5dDeuXN5Cw&pf=p&sclient=psy&safe=off&gl=us&aq=0&aqi=&aql=&oq=best+digital+camera+under+3&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=1&cad=b" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...</a><p>ReviewGist page moves from rank 1 to 5.<p>ReviewGist listing might not have original content but it is the most relevant and accurate. Every other page lists the best cameras under $300 for the previous years, from 2008 to 2010. Only ReviewGist page has the cameras that you should buy right now for under $300 as we update our lists every week. Ask any shop keeper who knows the latest models and they will agree with ReviewGist recommendations more than any of the sites listed from 1 to 5.
I can't help but wonder if this small change will upset the economic incentive to publish oceans of garbage onto the web. At the end of the day it's about the money, and the farms have a <i>very</i> good understanding of how much they can make off of their various "offerings".<p>What has been troublesome over the last two years is not so much that Google seemed to look the other way (until now), but that larger media companies like AOL and Yahoo were turning to this kind of behavior as a "viable" strategy for the future. It's amazing how many people will work for very, very little an hour writing garbage as opposed to minimum wage with possible tips at a restaurant. The allure of easy money has corrupted people's incentive from the top to the very bottom.<p>For once I see an actual way to compete with Google. Bing could outright <i>ban</i> sites that produce garbage and make their search results look pretty good by comparison. The question is whether Microsoft is willing to drop the pretense of objectivity to do so. Would users care? Would advertisers?
It will be interesting to see if this negatively affects the traffic to some of the 'newspapers' (Daily Mail, Telegraph) who just recycle PR in the guise of journalistic endeavour. cf. <a href="http://churnalism.com" rel="nofollow">http://churnalism.com</a><p>Does the algorithm update also apply to Google News?
Link to source: <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html" rel="nofollow">http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-qua...</a>
It'll be interesting to see where this goes in the next 24 hours: <a href="http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=DMD" rel="nofollow">http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=DMD</a>. And by "where this goes", I mean how much it tanks.
Actually, I was wrong. The results are US only, so (for now, anyways) you can view what the results looked like before the update by changing the language parameter (&hl=) or the &gl= parameter in the url. For instance, pre-algo rankings (Mahalo #1):<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=it&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...</a><p>Same query after the update (Mahalo at #7):<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=us&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...</a>
Coincidentally (or maybe not, if someone at Google has a wicked sense of humor) PaidContent published an interview this morning with the CEO of Demand Media:<p><a href="http://paidcontent.org/article/419-interview-demand-medias-rosenblatt-on-why-he-isnt-worried-about-google/" rel="nofollow">http://paidcontent.org/article/419-interview-demand-medias-r...</a><p>Check out his response to the question: <i>What happens if the company you’re most synergistic with turns you off? Is that something you think about? Do you have to make sure you have other revenue that isn’t reliant on this synergy with Google?</i>
<i>If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them</i><p>I wonder what those domains are.
I googled "sharpen a knife" yesterday early afternoon and I'm pretty sure I got ehow high on the front page. Now it's halfway down the second page.<p>Appropriately, the summary for eHow is: "on 3/31/2009 This article provides a high level overview of sharpening, but doesn't provide enough detail to enable a beginner to sharpen a knife ..."<p>Is there some tool SEO people use to compare results before/after Google algorithm changes? Would be interesting to see.
How you view this algo change, I guess depends on if you control websites that might be classified as "content farms".<p>Job sites, classifieds sites, news archive sites, social sites like HN or reddit etc.<p>There are a few legit businessmodels (as in, not against Google TOS) that feel the heat from this update.<p>I am all for banning scraper sites, especially if they outrank the source. But I don't like this update at all: There are still too many what-if's and classification problems (where do you stop?). Do the giants get a free pass, and do the new sites have to fight an uphill battle?<p>What do I tell new clients? I've seen the same with Keyword-In-Domain's outranking more established sites. What is a whitehat SEO to do, but claim a few Keyword-In-Domains. Now KID's start to become more and more greyhat. Not because claiming a KID is so bad, but because Google has problem ranking relevancy over KID's.<p>Having a curated content farm, in itself is not a problem and perfectly whitehat. If its a good idea after this update, time will tell. I would really like to know if curated content farms with an editorial staff will be hurt by this update. I don't feel safe right now at all.<p>P.S. I guess I've found the first blackhat technique to combat being classified a low-quality non-unique site. Google says to add value. So you pull in content from multiple sources, instead of a single source, you article spin the content a little, you add reviews and comments, and then you comment on/review your own stories. Content farms will turn into comment/review farms, and no one will be the wiser.<p>Also affiliate sites (Google always had you in her sights) and ecommerce sites that used the supplied product descriptions will have a harder time now. Realistically that would include smarter affiliate sites like hackerbooks.com (no unique content, just an Amazon storefront for all Google cares)
I have a decent list of queries I've been collecting data on to compare once word came that a change was rolled out. This is an interesting one that I saw in a comments thread somewhere...<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=how+to+renew+an+expired+passport&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGLL_enUS382US382&ie=UTF-8" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=how+to+renew+an+expir...</a><p>The Demand Media angle is really interesting too. I love the bit quoted in the Searchengineland article from the CEO, wondering how they got tagged with the "content farm" label. Pretty sure this is where <i>I</i> first saw it...<p><a href="http://www.theawl.com/2010/11/my-summer-on-the-content-farm" rel="nofollow">http://www.theawl.com/2010/11/my-summer-on-the-content-farm</a>
Today will be an interesting day to watch web stats.<p>I'm really happy they are doing something about the programming/scraping sites. Asking the same question and getting the same answers from top 3 or 4 results was driving me bonkers.<p>Playing contrarian, though, I wonder how much of these changes are generated by actual user feelings? I am concerned that there is a very vocal minority (which is probably represented the most strongly inside the hacker community) who is now starting to determine what makes a good site or not. If Google starts getting swung around by 2% of its user base simply because they're the loudest, I don't think that would necessarily result in a better product for all -- even though so far, so good.
I'm not sure the "getting pregnant" advice was such a good example. Of course people will laugh when advice involves sex. If the 4 paragraphs had their order changed, so if the first two were switched with the last 2, and perhaps the two paragraphs involving sex were edited down to one, the complaint wouldn't hold water. I posit that such content is just a lightweight overview, which is badly edited and doesn't have too many specific points of action. Compared to other useless scraper content I've seen, it's not that bad.
Neat the example I posted is fixed. In fact me talking about the search in another thread shows up fairly high on the first page.<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=mysql+spatial+index+example+lft+rgt" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...</a><p>Only downside is that the explainextended.com article shows up below stackoverflow.com which is too bad because that article would teach you far more than the stackoverflow question would.
I'm vaguely disturbed by all the talk about "sites people want to see fall". That sounds like almost manual bias against certain sites to me. Didn't hear anything about language analysis and figuring out what is high quality vs low quality content.
I wonder how much longer it will be after Google's changes go live that we start to see the exact same changes "magically" appear in Bing as well.<p><i>cough</i>