Internet, Seo | featured news

Ever since Google released its Penguin update last year, which penalizes sites for being linked to by low quality sites, I’ve been getting a regular stream of link removal requests. (Yeah, I know this implies that my site is low quality, but I’ll let that go.)

Because Binh, Popcorn, and I had been blogging for months for Movies With Butter (a.k.a. MWB), we decided to apply for inclusion in Google News. I tried applying for Wopular, but I didn’t make the cut because they don’t accept one man shops. With MWB, we have three and because of that, we made the cut.

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.

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.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, I've started working for BookTeller.com, a website that offers animated children's books with voice-over narration for a monthly subscription fee. It's a great educational tool for parents and teachers to teach kids how to read.