Earlier this month, Google made public that they will release several new anti-spam algorithms this year. The first algorithm update has just been released and it deals with content farms.

 

What are content farms?

 

There are two slightly different definitions of content farms:

1.    Content farms are scraper sites that aggregate the content from other sources to get high rankings for a variety of long tail keywords. These sites don't have unique content and they only aggregate the content from other websites to get clicks on their AdSense ads.

2.    Content farms are websites that produce low quality content in bulk. This content is often produced by workers from low-wage countries. The main purpose of these sites is to get high rankings for as many keywords as possible to get clicks on the AdSense ads that are displayed on the site.

 

Sites that copy the content from other websites often ranked higher than the original site in Google's previous algorithm. That's why Google released the algorithm update.

 

Google's own Matt Cutts confirmed the new algorithm:

 

"[I mentioned] that 'we're evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others' content and sites with low levels of original content.'

That change was approved at our weekly quality launch meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week."

 

Less than 0.5% of search queries have significantly different results

 

Googles Matt Cutts also said that most surfers won't notice the change:

"This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice.

 

The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site's content."

 

The algorithm doesn't seem to be perfect yet

 

In an online discussion, many webmasters complained that their original sites have suffered while low quality sites still rank well:

 

"It doesn't matter if it is all 100% unique with tons of backlinks and really well laid out or simply an image. Everything got whacked. Our out of date non unique ad filled sites are humming along FINE. So what's the message here Google? Write an in depth article that takes 3 days to complete and is linked to by hundreds of companies and gov agencies and loose all positions sitewide while our out of date halfbaked and useless content does fine?"

 

Should you change your web pages?

 

Google doesn't like spam. If you want to get lasting rankings on Google, you have to do three things:

• Create a high quality website that you plan to keep for long time.
• Optimize the pages of your website so that both website visitors and Google and indeed all the search engines see what they want.
• Attain as many authority and theme related links as possible to show Google that your site can be trusted.

Spammy and black hat SEO techniques often deliver quick results but they only work for a short time. If you plan to build a lasting online business, then the SEO Authority can help as we focus on ethical search engine optimisation methods.

 

One of our key checks during a website audit and analysis is to ensure nobody is scraping your original content and using it for their own advantage, which in turn may affect your rankings.  If you have any concerns about how this Google update will impact your business and rankings, contact one of our SEO experts today.