Google have made some pretty large changes to their search algorithms a couple of days ago. This has caused massive havock, mainly with popular article websites. People who mainly use articles for their online / Internet marketing have been noticeing MASSIVE drops in their article ranking, some as high as 94% loss.
Google's intention was to cut down on 'content farms'. These are various websites which employ lots of authors to constantly churn out content, mostly very low quality and offering no real value to the people that find it. I think the idea of the change is great (as we as Action Online always say content is king) but the way this has affected major article sites is unfair.
Here's their announcement: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html
Yes, these article sites DO have low to mid quality articles BUT they do have many very high quality articles as well. It seems the algorithm change has affected most, if not all the articles in these article sites, not because of the quality of the content but because the articles were in that site.
I think the techs at Google will be working over time to 'improve' (fix!) this. ;)
Articles sites affected by this change include;
- ezinearticles.com
- hubpages.com
- buzzle.com
- associatedcontent.com
- articlesbase.com
But I'm sure there will be more.
Now, the last I read, the change was rolled out to the US only, so hopefully this won't affect New Zealand yet. And 'hopefully' they'll tweak (fix) their change before rolling it out to the rest of the world.
This is why we never rely on ONE form of Internet marketing. You need to cover many areas to ensure you website gets to the first page of Google. And know that Search Engine Optimisation is always a changing world. :)
