Google declares war on content farms

^Because google is saying that Content Farms are the enemy today, not bad content, which it knows damn well it cannot defeat.

Speaking of EZineArticles, I just read their sad response to this over here:
Search Engine Algorithm Changes

Man, Chris isn't fooling around, they've lost 35% of their traffic overnight and now he's making every last link nofollow, raising the minimum article word count to 400, killing their WP submission plugin, requiring complete, 100% exclusivity on articles, (!) and doubling the patrol on spam.

-I don't think he gets it... Google is fighting the FORMAT, he's not even addressing that!

Anyway, Removing the dofollow is going to bite his ass hard. Goodnight, EZA, goodnight.
 


lukep said:
^Because google is saying that Content Farms are the enemy today, not bad content, which it knows damn well it cannot defeat.

Speaking of EZineArticles, I just read their sad response to this over here:
Search Engine Algorithm Changes

Man, Chris isn't fooling around, they've lost 35% of their traffic overnight and now he's making every last link nofollow, raising the minimum article word count to 400, killing their WP submission plugin, requiring complete, 100% exclusivity on articles, (!) and doubling the patrol on spam.

-I don't think he gets it... Google is fighting the FORMAT, he's not even addressing that!

Anyway, Removing the dofollow is going to bite his ass hard. Goodnight, EZA, goodnight.
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I think his whole response and reaction is him just politicking to Google's whims. Especially the nofollow thing, the only benefit that can come out of it is Google changing it's mind.

I want to see Calacanis be this humble.
 
Haha, did anyone else notice the little slip there, where he implied the content on ezinearticles was shitty?

If you do a query for popular terms that we formerly ranked very high with, instead of an EzineArticles result, you may find low-quality sites that deliver even lower value to the user than our own members' content!
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Unarmed Gunman said:
Fuck. Now that means my quality content sites will be stuck with more traffic? What to do?
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This is the right attitude ... and judging from my clientèle, I'd say there are a lot of people on this forum without much to worry about because they already create great, distinctive sites with original content.

From an affiliate marketing perspective, there's money to be made on content farms, but probably a lot more money to be made on independent domains with unique content anyway. Middlemen take a cut. They also limit your choices of revenue. If I interpret the press release correctly, the content farms are being targeted as a direct result of user feedback - which means a significant swath of users are already ignoring these sites anyway.

From a content-writing perspective, I can say that these farms do under-pay. I worked for DS for a very short time and was not impressed. I have been far happier freelancing for independent marketers on WF.

If it's any consolation, Google tends to take time to "adjust" when they massively change their algorithms. It's not uncommon to see good content drop temporarily in the rankings and then surge back up after a couple weeks once the spiders figure out that you're not the enemy. If your content farm page has plummeted, it could be temporary. This sort of thing happens a lot on Google Maps; I don't see why it'd be much different here.

It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

K.
 
webdesignsbyapw said:
Why are sites like EzineArticles and even Hubpages loosing positions? They are a content farm, but all of their content is unique. Could someone please explain this to me?
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Most of ezine articles content is not unique. Most people who submit articles also post the same articles on their blogs, their sites, and submit the same articles to dozens of other stupid article directories.

The point is that you could delete the ezine articles site tomorrow and no real value would be lost. Not one bit. 98% of the content could still be found on tons of other sites. The only people who would care are Chris, the owner of the site, and all the "marketers" who submit articles.
 
O Noes!



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onoes.jpg
onoes.jpg
 
kyescontent said:
The trouble was he said "even lower" instead of just "lower." It's subtle, but it reads poorly.
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Saying "lower" would be just as bad because it still implies that your content's quality is low. Speaking of low, since google is drawing swords on "low-quality text" are they are also saying that if a website primary content is text that it will rank lower?
 
Does this mean that we should have our sites be at 400 words or more?

And why would Ezine put links at noFollow? Is Google going to look at Dofollow links as a bad thing?

If anyone has some tips on what we should do to improve our sites for Google, let us know here. It would really help the community. If I come up with something, I'll let you guys know.
 
Eldarion said:
Saying "lower" would be just as bad because it still implies that your content's quality is low. Speaking of low, since google is drawing swords on "low-quality text" are they are also saying that if a website primary content is text that it will rank lower?
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True heh; there were many way better ways he could've phrased that.

My guess on your question is no, because when I worked for Google Rating Projects we were told years ago to demote sites that had duplicate content -or- content that was so simplistic that the average user would know it without viewing the site in question. We weren't told to demote text-heavy sites though; often we were told to rate them quite highly; if we thought they were information-rich and added unique value, or seemed particularly well researched for instance.

That could've changed by now, but I'd be surprised. The sites they're going after now they were already going after then, but it used to be more on a case by case basis. I rated many content farm pages as very low. I also rated many non-content farm pages as very low. I rated many non-content farm pages as high ... but I have to admit that I rarely could rate content farm pages highly and still be sticking with the Google criteria.

webdesignsbyapw said:
Does this mean that we should have our sites be at 400 words or more?

And why would Ezine put links at noFollow? Is Google going to look at Dofollow links as a bad thing?

If anyone has some tips on what we should do to improve our sites for Google, let us know here. It would really help the community. If I come up with something, I'll let you guys know.
Click to expand...

Suggestions for improvement is kind of broad ... do you have a specific question? I worked for Google Rating Projects. There's a lot I don't know about Google, but also a lot that I do.
 
Can you tell me why google hates Afternoon Tiger so much? I used to get 50 clicks from them a day, a number that had been slowly growing for months to 5 clicks at the change at the beginning of february. Now I'ts bounced back a little to about 15 clicks a day. But yesterday night the primary keyword was ranked number 2, 8 hours later it was ranked number 4, meanwhile the new number 2 and 3 sites have not changed for months neither did my page change in that time. It looks like it got hit yet again by these new changes.

My writing is unique and I am noindex archives for tags and categories.
 
webdesignsbyapw said:
And why would Ezine put links at noFollow? Is Google going to look at Dofollow links as a bad thing?
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The same reason blogs make comment links nofollow...

To discourage people from spinning shitty ass articles and posting them just so they can get link juice. Although many of the pros here do say that nofollow links carry some authority, it's still much less than a nofollow link.
 
Nice that you shared that . Very interesting to see what they have to say about this change in google algorithm.



lukep said:
^Because google is saying that Content Farms are the enemy today, not bad content, which it knows damn well it cannot defeat.

Speaking of EZineArticles, I just read their sad response to this over here:
Search Engine Algorithm Changes

Man, Chris isn't fooling around, they've lost 35% of their traffic overnight and now he's making every last link nofollow, raising the minimum article word count to 400, killing their WP submission plugin, requiring complete, 100% exclusivity on articles, (!) and doubling the patrol on spam.

-I don't think he gets it... Google is fighting the FORMAT, he's not even addressing that!

Anyway, Removing the dofollow is going to bite his ass hard. Goodnight, EZA, goodnight.
Click to expand...
 
Eldarion said:
Can you tell me why google hates Afternoon Tiger so much? I used to get 50 clicks from them a day, a number that had been slowly growing for months to 5 clicks at the change at the beginning of february. Now I'ts bounced back a little to about 15 clicks a day. But yesterday night the primary keyword was ranked number 2, 8 hours later it was ranked number 4, meanwhile the new number 2 and 3 sites have not changed for months neither did my page change in that time. It looks like it got hit yet again by these new changes.

My writing is unique and I am noindex archives for tags and categories.
Click to expand...

This is just a guess ... but if your main keyword you're trying to rank for is "Afternoon Tiger", I expect you'd rank higher if you had a page on your site dedicated specifically to the Afternoon Tiger move. I see nothing at all wrong with your site; it looks great - and it's better than the two results immediately above it (the wiki one I can understand ranking highly) for Naruto in general. I think though that google is interpreting the query in a very specific fashion and thinks your page won't answer the user's question, ie. "what is afternoon tiger" as well as the links presently above yours. Even though -you- know it's just a themed name for your general Naruto page and -you- can perceive the user's intent differently, Google can't. It isn't just keyword density that ranks you; it's also Google's interpretation of how well a page fits its perception of user intent.

K.
 
kyescontent said:
Suggestions for improvement is kind of broad ...
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It's funny because what Mr. Knight thinks will make Google happier will get latched on to like some sort of fact when he's just grasping at straws. Google won't be any happier with "14 Critical Forex Beginner Mistakes" instead of "3 Critical Forex Beginner Mistakes."
 
EZA created their own problems by letting really crap content go through and also just killing those pages with ads. And now they want to do nofollow in the resource box? Why would people want to write for them again? From the comments its the "massive" traffic from click through which doesn't exist anymore because of penalties.

My FAVORITE quote in the comments was that even if EZA uses nofollow those "quality" websites that pick up and republish your articles will give you all the links you need. Like its not 90% scraper/spinner sites grabbing those up and remove the original links.
 
JCash said:
It's funny because what Mr. Knight thinks will make Google happier will get latched on to like some sort of fact when he's just grasping at straws. Google won't be any happier with "14 Critical Forex Beginner Mistakes" instead of "3 Critical Forex Beginner Mistakes."
Click to expand...

Google would be happier with a page with -one- critical forex beginner mistake that it hasn't already seen in every other list of 3, 14, or 50, than it would be with any number of mistakes it's seen before.

Of course, many Forex mistakes are made repeatedly and need to be repeatedly pointed out, which is why all of this is to some extent nonsense.

On the other hand, if your list of FX mistakes takes a new angle than other lists, even if the actual topics are identical, Google will also take a kinder view of your page. If your page lists -why- something is a mistake, instead of just that it is, for instance, or how to fix that mistake, when no one elses' pages offer those solutions, then your page will also do better.

It isn't just keyword density. It's context, uniqueness, point of view and interpretation of user intent.
 
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