Last week Google has made the biggest change in its search algorithm. It affected many websites that depend on Google to drive majority of their traffic. This major change is done to rank quality content higher in Google search results. Particularly pulling down the sites which have low quality / less original content and are of no use to users. The effect is that users will find sites which wrote the original content.Google says in a blog post on Thursday that these tweaks in the algorithm will affect 12% of its search results.

People give funny names to Google’s algorithm update. Be it “Jagger update” or “Hilltop update” This is called the Google “Farmer Update”. Do you know who gives names to Google algorithm updates? Many people in search marketing world don’t know how Google updates get their names. It all started in 2003 from WebmasterWorld.

In the blog post Google says “Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.”

So quite are the Google’s algorithm changes that few people notice them. But these recent algorithm changes has begun to show effects on various websites. This time “Content Farms” are Google’s target. Matt Cutts wouldn’t say that Algorithm update has targeted the content farms, but Danny Sullivan thinks Google has not targeted the farms so much as it aimed at the low quality content sites.

Who are content farms?
Content farms are websites which publish mass text content targeting top searched keywords on search engines. These text content pages are specially designed to rank high on top searched keywords and generate advertising revenue through visits from search engines. Some sites can be called content farms but have valuation worth of millions of dollars. eg:- ezinearticles.com.

Article directories are being hit particularly by “Farmer update”. Ezinearticles may see 50% drop in their organic traffic by end of this month. Many webmasters on Webmasterworld.com reports of traffic loss overnight and some say that they can’t adapt the algo so quickly. backdraft7 commented :-“Hey Google, this is not fun anymore – YOU’RE KILLING OUR BUSINESSES!”.

Content creators adhere to many legitimate ways to optimize their websites to get higher ranking in Google. But the search giant came cracking down on them as it sees it as inappropriate attempts to do. This update has upset many big players. Demand Media which has a market valuation of $1.9 billion more than New York Times Co already may have experienced fall in traffic according to a study done by a German seo firm as well as data pulled together by Compete.com for BNET.study done

Content Farms are always been controversial to Google as you can find well informative articles on them and some people claim that they amass large amount of content every day only to rank high on Google on as many keywords possible.

Personally I find many valuable articles in EzineArticles.com and other large content sites. There are also many articles I don’t find worth reading. The question is the Algorithm is targeting specific sites or specific pages? But as I read the Google blog I think the words used in the post tell us that this is site specific targeting rather than page specific.

A very important question “How Google will treat news sites & classified sites that have duplicate content?” News sites use PTI source for content, classified sites can have same listing as other classified sites as a advertiser may have posted the same content in more than one classified sites. What will Google do here as these are not illegitimate ways? Matt can you hear me?

As Google states: Any change to Google’s algorithm is a zero-sum game. Some websites win, some lose. Will this algorithm update have a lasting effect on search quality? Anytime Google updates its algorithm to clean its search results, those determined to beat it immediate adjusts.

And of course I pormise to blog more frequently now….