Google, Google Algorithm | featured news

About a year ago, I wrote about getting daily requests/demands/threats to remove links to random sites on Wopular. I didn’t add those external links myself. They’re all done automatically through RSS feeds. If another site’s content is related to a headline on Wopular, then a link to it is generated.

Last Thursday, Google launched another algorithm change to their search engine that rewards “fresher” content. For example, if you’re searching for a current event, the latest news articles would pop up to the top of the page. 35% of the search results are affected. I was thinking this should be great for a news sites like Wopular. I checked Google Analytics on Thursday and instead of getting a traffic boost, I got the opposite - a dip.

Last week, Google launched another Panda update. After I kinda fully recovered from the previous update, this one brough me back down again. I lost about 50% of my Google traffic. After each update, I'll change a few things around to make it a site that Google would like. And I usually recover. The only thing is I wonder if I would have recovered anyway if I didn't do anything, especially since each update always bring me back down.

Senh: It's unfortunate, but as soon as Google adds an editorial layer on top of their search engine, it's game over for the company - then you can definitely say there's a bias in their search results. It opens up a whole can of worms. What I don't get is why Rick Santorum couldn't do the same and get his followers to tweet and blog about him to push his official site up to the top of the results.

Google have been tweating their search algorithms this year to battle content farms and scrapers. They named this tweak Panda Update. In February of this year, they released the first version, which was aimed at lowering the rankings of content farms - i.e. eHow, ezinearticles.com, and wisegeek.com. I don’t consider my site a content farm, but I did saw a 40% decrease in traffic as soon as the new algorithm went live.

Senh: Interesting that the one site that Google supposedly targeted with their previous algorithm has almost no effect on the site's traffic.

Senh: If you really want to know, AND you like math, go ahead and read the article. If not, I double dare you.

Last Thursday, Google launched a new tweak to their search algorithm. It was targeted at content farms, which many consider to be spammy sites whose content are created solely to attract search engine traffic for specific keywords.

I do notice more and more of these sites on Google’s search results. For me, the main offender is ezinearticles.com. Most of the articles I get from there are completely useless. They’re just keywords being repeated over and over again with a bunch of fillers. I can see why Google wants to push those sites further down their search rankings.