Low Quality Web Sites Beware
by Warren
(NY)
It is official. Google has unleashed an enormous algorithmic change. This change which was designed to provide users with more high quality sites in searches will probably affect about 11.8% of Google's queries.
For the time being, these initial changes have only been launched in the U.S. The rest of the World Wide Web, you have been given notice.
Changes have been noticed and felt throughout out the U.S. Some have been directly affected by the changes and some have not. According to Google's blog, the changes were designed to address/reduce the rankings of poor quality sites while rewarding high quality sites. Now, what do we mean by high quality sites, which kind will the algorithm reward?
The thinking is that sites with original content, sites rich in research, analysis and in depth reports well fair well. Sites that have the appearance of being ?content farms? will fair worse. Content farms are generally viewed as websites which are created in large part with content from other sites. An example would be a website that is created based on the highest searched terms for the day.
Although Google claims that the data gathered for the change did not come from its Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, data from the Blocklist was "compared" in tweaking the effectiveness of the algorithm. The algorithmic changes are said to have addressed 84 percent of the sites on the Blocklist.
I think most people were aware that there would be constant changes in terms of their Google rankings and algorithm updates, however I don't think many were prepared for these latest. Some owners have reported losing 40% of their traffic from Google, overnight
Google has really been cracking down recently. Rumor has it that JCPenny and Overstock have been recently penalized. Supposedly, these two companies had been rigging Google rankings by setting up fake website which were then linked to their main site.
All and all, the moral of the story is... don't place all your eggs in one basket! Remember, your site's traffic should be diversified. Article Marketing, Directories and CPC (cost per click) are all alternative methods in terms of traffic. Make sure that these options are investigated. Over the long run, content and diversification is the key.
