Google: throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

Emily Hill

Write My Site

Tue, 15-03-2011 02:43

A major change to the Google search algorithm is about to hit the UK. The search engine giant is cracking down on sites that it judges to contain ‘low quality content’ and the change is already affecting 11.8% of search queries in the US (it has yet to be implemented here in the UK, but we can expect a similar effect when it is).

The update has been nicknamed ‘Google Farmer’ because it’s specifically aimed at pushing links and content farms to the bottom of the search results.

Google explains the change on its blog:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites – sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites – sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

And therein lies the rub: what constitutes a site that is “just not very useful”? Early results from the Farmer update suggest that Google may have punished some good sites along with the bad.

Ezinearticles.com is an article syndication site that’s been in operation for nearly eleven years. It has strict editorial guidelines, including a ban on advertorial and keyword stuffing, and employs human editors to approve or reject submissions. Prior to the Farmer update, Ezinearticles.com rejected 40% of its submissions on the basis of poor quality.

This has not stopped Google from casting the site’s content to the bottom of the listings. The CEO of Ezinearticles.com, Chris Knight, said in a blog piece that his company’s website experienced a 35% drop in traffic the day after Google Farmer was implemented.

It is of course a good thing to get rid of spam article marketing sites that allow people to submit any old rubbish, safe in the knowledge that it will be automatically approved and published. However, it’s unduly harsh to punish Ezinearticles.com and the handful of other established article syndication sites that already exercise robust editorial control.

Knight says Google “has a lot of smart PhD types working on this problem”, so we must hope the balance will be redressed soon.

Emily Hill is the Managing Director of Write My Site, a content agency based in London. Write My Site creates digital content for clients and agencies who want an energetic online presence. Their content services extend across websites, blogs, article directories and social media platforms. All of their work comes with a Quality Guarantee: they only stop writing when the client is 100% happy.