
Google Forecloses on Content Farms with "Farmer" Algorithm Update - InfinityX0
http://searchengineland.com/google-forecloses-on-content-farms-with-farmer-algorithm-update-66071
======
OmarIsmail
Here's a specific query moultano: "ikea malm bed" before:
[http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...](http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=it&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&gl=it&q=ikea+malm+bed&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=2ce4b7de8d5212a)
after:
[http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...](http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=us&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=ikea+malm+bed&cp=10&qe=aWtlYSBtYWxtIA&qesig=fzIiLYqoVn1cAbQyVOoeVw&pkc=AFgZ2tmunisp7QpCwTjGCATISMYyE9y37kDzV351Fx5dgHw2ZrcrUTs6-Xt15-j
--
gLXEptbaKjWHejsHvGbgwDrYX_IHa32Cg&pf=p&sclient=psy&safe=off&gl=us&aq=0&aqi=&aql=&oq=ikea+malm+&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=2ce4b7de8d5212a)

The ProductWiki page moves from rank 5 to 9 being beaten out by eHow and
Scribd.

The ProductWiki page contains more than a dozen reviews and a slew of
comments/discussions.

Seems like we got hit as a "low quality" site while scribd and eHow didn't.
Amazing.

~~~
OmarIsmail
Ok, been looking at some other searches and finding some interesting things,
at least in the shopping vertical.

I present another example "HP 2310m" Before:
[http://www.google.com/webhp?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&#...](http://www.google.com/webhp?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=it&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&gl=it&q=HP+2310m&aq=f&aqi=g5&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=2ce4b7de8d5212a)
After: [http://www.google.com/webhp?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&#...</a><p>Major
differences are that other than the CNET review the new listings are
completely dominated by retailers. All the way to page 3. Compare that with
the old listings where you see a mix of retailers and other product-centric
sites (review sites and forums specifically).<p>The other major difference is
the presence of a Google Products "One Box" in the new listing. I saw this in
other examples as well where the Google Products section shows up a lot more
often. And product centric sites are being dinged.<p>I'm seeing us
(ProductWiki) and sites in the same space (Retrevo and TestFreaks) have been
dinged. The difference between us and those other two sites is that we have
unique original content from our community. Traditionally this has served us
well by getting better rankings usually (we follow the make a good site and
Google will reward you philosophy), but it seems like we're being lumped in
with those guys now.<p>From an optics standpoint this really doesn't look
good. Shut out the product listing sites and start promoting Google's own
product listings a lot more aggressively.

~~~
sili
I'm disappointed at the general trend of ranking shopping sites higher than
review and information sites when searching for a product name. If I'm looking
for some products, most likely I need information about it, and I don't need
to be bombarded by what equates to the circulars. If I want to buy it I can go
directly to Amazon's site or any other online store. I think results from
shopping sites should be kept inside the Shopping search (unless they also
contain product reviews I suppose.)

~~~
YooLi
I disagree. When I enter just a product name, I am looking for the product.
When I want reviews, I append 'reviews' to the product name. I would venture
to guess that I am not the only one expecting it to work that way if that's
the way Google has changed things.

~~~
ollysb
Unfortunately it's rare that you find a product listing which hasn't got a
"review(s)" section at the end so this isn't an effective strategy.

------
starnix17
I don't know if it's live yet, but my concert listings site is now number one
for a lot of common searches (philly concerts, philadelphia concerts).

It used to be like 2 or 3 pages down below a bunch of content farms, very glad
about this.

Edit: Actually, now I'm number 4 for philadelphia and number 1 for Philly,
still pretty happy though.

~~~
zaidf
Enjoy the ride :) You may have hit the google lottery!

We launched our music start-up(now dead) and it was getting few k uniques/day.
Then overnight we start seeing thousands of visitors from Thailand. And each
day--literally--the number would increase by a few grand. Turns out YouTube
was blocked in Thailand and we were getting a good chunk of YouTube's traffic
from Google. Eventually YouTube was unblocked(six mos later) and our traffic
flat-lined.

------
ehsanul
This could be very painful for the likes of Mahalo. I remember Jason Calcanis
mentioning, perhaps when he first noted a change of direction for Mahalo to
high-quality content, that he'll make sure Mahalo is the number one Google
result for "how to cook a turkey" and similar queries, where they've spent
hundreds of dollars (maybe more) on quality content, notably videos. I just
Googled "how to cook a turkey", without quotes, and Mahalo is nowhere to be
seen! Not sure if tha t's a good thing or a bad thing, but the guys at Mahalo
might just be freaking out right now.

~~~
MatthewDP
One of Mahalo's "pride and joy" results was "How to Play Guitar". They were #2
for a while, now they're 5-6.

~~~
BrandonM
Their "How to Play Guitar" page is actually pretty good. It should easily be 3
or 4, ahead of wikiHow, guitarreference, and about.com.

~~~
BoppreH
Mahalo is the top result here. Brazilian Google, but with language set as
English. Removing the .br from the url takes Mahalo to the second place.

[http://www.google.com.br/search?client=opera&rls=en&...](http://www.google.com.br/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=How+to+Play+Guitar&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest)

------
a5seo
So I started tracking rankings on 164 of eHow's top keywords (selected based
on SEMRush report of their most-valuable, SearchVol * CPC).

Anyway, here's the downward movement since the algo started rolling out:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+build+a+robot+from+scr...](http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+build+a+robot+from+scratch)
(-1 ranking)

<http://www.google.com/search?q=eurotop+bed> (-1)

<http://www.google.com/search?q=watch+live+cable+tv+online> (-1)

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=find+answers+to+cro...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=find+answers+to+crossword+puzzles)
(-1)

So while this may have hit eHow to some degree, 4/164 doesn't seem like a
massacre. That said, seoMoz only updates rankings weekly, so maybe next
Wednesday will be a different story.

~~~
quizbiz
Thanks for this research. ;)

------
bluethunder
"best digital camera under 300"

Before:
[http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...](http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=it&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=best+digital+camera+under+300&cp=27&qe=YmVzdCBkaWdpdGFsIGNhbWVyYSB1bmRlciAz&qesig=3LsmQ31FS23jTEL9E7L99A&pkc=AFgZ2tm6DJ2w_8nTzgPZUJe11cj6OaULhC5fy0gZI6XV5B9EiBet61SCz6Pma7odTe67IGIV3iSqLZ7eEs5NJLrotrtOy9gV6w&pf=p&sclient=psy&safe=off&gl=it&aq=0&aqi=&aql=&oq=best+digital+camera+under+3&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=2ce4b7de8d5212a)

After:
[http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...](http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=us&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=best+digital+camera+under+300&cp=27&qe=YmVzdCBkaWdpdGFsIGNhbWVyYSB1bmRlciAz&qesig=qDMeK6vi7twIKTqFpKi0gQ&pkc=AFgZ2tlP2pTmaNtxuRMdgw8x7nJyJyH_jEFkEHYxFC3rlz1Shjh2WnGyBmmCFniXXDmW_
--NtLI-
uAE1Kmh-7-jZ5dDeuXN5Cw&pf=p&sclient=psy&safe=off&gl=us&aq=0&aqi=&aql=&oq=best+digital+camera+under+3&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=1&cad=b)

ReviewGist page moves from rank 1 to 5.

ReviewGist listing might not have original content but it is the most relevant
and accurate. Every other page lists the best cameras under $300 for the
previous years, from 2008 to 2010. Only ReviewGist page has the cameras that
you should buy right now for under $300 as we update our lists every week. Ask
any shop keeper who knows the latest models and they will agree with
ReviewGist recommendations more than any of the sites listed from 1 to 5.

------
ary
I can't help but wonder if this small change will upset the economic incentive
to publish oceans of garbage onto the web. At the end of the day it's about
the money, and the farms have a _very_ good understanding of how much they can
make off of their various "offerings".

What has been troublesome over the last two years is not so much that Google
seemed to look the other way (until now), but that larger media companies like
AOL and Yahoo were turning to this kind of behavior as a "viable" strategy for
the future. It's amazing how many people will work for very, very little an
hour writing garbage as opposed to minimum wage with possible tips at a
restaurant. The allure of easy money has corrupted people's incentive from the
top to the very bottom.

For once I see an actual way to compete with Google. Bing could outright _ban_
sites that produce garbage and make their search results look pretty good by
comparison. The question is whether Microsoft is willing to drop the pretense
of objectivity to do so. Would users care? Would advertisers?

~~~
hackernews1
Search for "Share Bookmarks" AOL/TC about google is No. 1 while delicious is
No.2 Interesting

~~~
hackernews1
mahalo is No.3 when you search for it. <http://www.google.com/search?q=mahalo>

many outdated sites are on 1st page for other terms

------
nhebb
This is absolutely fantastic. I just googled a few programming topics and the
difference is very noticeable. Kudos to Google.

~~~
moultano
Would love links to the queries if you can remember them.

~~~
forkandwait
Not his, but mine: "split string python"

~~~
llimllib
1-4: python.org (good, though one result is for version 2.3)

5: java2s.com (terrible. no content, huge ads. Thank you, flashblock)

6: tutorialspoint.com (w3schools-like. Borderline content farm)

7: stackoverflow.com (pretty relevant, good result)

8: diveintopython.org (should be the first non-python.org result)

9: diveintopython3.org (good)

10: oreilly.com (sample chapter for "Learning Python", excellent)

So, 1-4 are python.org, results 5-6 blow, and 7-10 are superb and should be
nearer the top. Not a bad performance, but not perfect.

~~~
nikcub
I would argue that results 1-4 are more confusing than 'good'. Most users in
that situation are just going to open each one of those 4 in tabs.

Compare to DDG[1]:

1\. An extract from a StackOverflow answer showing how to split a string into
a list in python. It uses tokenize and isn't exactly what was being asked, but
good.

2\. python.org - A single result

3\. Stackoverflow answer (a better answer)

4\. java2s (urgh)

5\. A shitty mailing list archive page from the dev group[2]

6\. Another mailing list archive

7\. A good tutorial, should be second result

8\. A forum thread that is outdated

9\. Wikibooks - a good answer, should be further up

Not one result in any search engine links directly to the str split() entry in
the official docs.

[1] <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=split+string+python>

[2] Pages like this should be purged from all search engines, I hate finding
them: <http://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/473717-string-split>

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thx for the specific example. Presumably
<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=split+python> is more what you were after with the
0-click function reference?

We've been trying a lot harder to get those into 0-click, but it doesn't show
up yet when you put string in the middle.

~~~
nikcub
ye thats it, it's just that the phrasing of the original example was a bit
different. are you guys able to go through search logs to see different
permutations of how visitors search for such terms?

ie. "python how to split", "split string python", "str split python" should
all = "split python"

Did you see the wikibooks result? That was excellent, I didn't even know about
it. Would it be possible to highlight that in the same way stackexchange is?

Those mailing list archive results are a real pain, they only have the answer
<1% of the time and are hard to read.

DDG is awesome - it has been my default browser for a little while now. Can I
just add one suggestion - put the 'make default browser search' somewhere on
your homepage after detecting the user browser? I remember it took me 10+
clicks and links to work out how to make DDG default in Chrome.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Awesome, yeah, that's what we're trying to do now (wrt to the permutations),
but we don't have a lot of data so it's a bit difficult.

Noted on the other results and thx for analyzing it so deeply. That realy
helps.

There is an 'Add to Chrome' on the homepage, but it goes away after you click
on it. Unfortunately, Chrome doesn't make it easy to switch providers. I wrote
this up here (about 5 major browsers): <http://ye.gg/addto>

~~~
nikcub
interesting post! that explain it - thanks

------
tomwalsham
It will be interesting to see if this negatively affects the traffic to some
of the 'newspapers' (Daily Mail, Telegraph) who just recycle PR in the guise
of journalistic endeavour. cf. <http://churnalism.com>

Does the algorithm update also apply to Google News?

~~~
joshes
This intrigues me as well due to the fact that many news and sports websites
simply post official Associated Press material. I would think that this sort
of thing is not frowned up as strongly as simple content farming due to
licensing agreements.

But of course that is relative to the observer.

~~~
jerf
Google's listings aren't really about being "frowned upon" or not. It's about
the best results for a given search. An RSS aggregator like the Planet X sites
or local newspaper simply running AP stories isn't doing anything wrong, but
that still doesn't mean Google should return them to you when it could send
you to the original source. Scrapers and content farms are parasites, and
again to the extent possible I mean that term morally neutrally. It's simply
what they are. Google doesn't have to make a moral call about parasitism to
determine that it isn't in their interests to return those pages.

~~~
eli
I don't think there is an "original source" URL for an AP story. The content
on hosted.ap.org is more like a scrape of various client newspaper sites than
vice versa and it's certainly not the most usable interface to AP content.

------
wildmXranat
Link to source: [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-
qua...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-
sites-in.html)

------
InfinityX0
It'll be interesting to see where this goes in the next 24 hours:
<http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=DMD>. And by "where this goes", I
mean how much it tanks.

~~~
patio11
I will be watching my AdWords spend, since it is dominated by farmed content
with no conceivable source of traffic other than Big Daddy G.

Edit to add:

Let me quantify "dominated" for you. Here's the top ten sites BCC ads show on
-- all stats 2/1/11 ~ 2/25/11:

[http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-
images/hn/adsense-f...](http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-
images/hn/adsense-february-2010.png)

Of the ones not marked as content farms or outright spam, 2 (maybe 2.5) are
sites I'd be happy to have my mother visit, and the other ones are ad-filled
monstrosities whose sole saving grace is that they are not MFA spam or content
farms.

Sadly, all of these are quite profitable for me. _cries_

~~~
davidw
Which category do those people fall into?

* Wanted to find something like BCC, ended up on those sites and saw your add.

* Wound up on those sites, saw your ad and said "oh, now that you mention it..."

In other words, is that site putting itself between you and your customers, or
is it actually attracting people that might not have otherwise bothered?

~~~
patio11
Judging by the URLs, they searched for e.g. [how to make bingo cards] and
found an eHow page. In an ideal world, I'd rank higher for that than eHow, but
I cannot make a page for each of sixty ways to phrase that without essentially
copying their farming methods.

~~~
Natsu
In other words, your ads are actually more relevant for them than the search
results they found?

Somehow, that just seems wrong.

------
mvandemar
Actually, I was wrong. The results are US only, so (for now, anyways) you can
view what the results looked like before the update by changing the language
parameter (&hl=) or the &gl= parameter in the url. For instance, pre-algo
rankings (Mahalo #1):

[http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...](http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=it&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=)

Same query after the update (Mahalo at #7):

[http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&...](http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&gl=us&q=mcdonalds+coupons&aq=0&aqi=g2g-s1g5g-s2&aql=)

~~~
gregable
There are other confounding effects when you change the language parameter.
Consider, for example, the query [bank] using your method:

[http://www.google.com/search?gl=en&q=bank](http://www.google.com/search?gl=en&q=bank)
bankofamerica.om bankfashion.co.uk

[http://www.google.com/search?gl=it&q=bank](http://www.google.com/search?gl=it&q=bank)
wikipedia.org bancaditalia.it

------
ilamont
Coincidentally (or maybe not, if someone at Google has a wicked sense of
humor) PaidContent published an interview this morning with the CEO of Demand
Media:

[http://paidcontent.org/article/419-interview-demand-
medias-r...](http://paidcontent.org/article/419-interview-demand-medias-
rosenblatt-on-why-he-isnt-worried-about-google/)

Check out his response to the question: _What happens if the company you’re
most synergistic with turns you off? Is that something you think about? Do you
have to make sure you have other revenue that isn’t reliant on this synergy
with Google?_

~~~
mashmac2
His response (for those who don't want to read another article):

"That could happen but it would be against their best interest and the
consumer’s best interest. It’s kind of like Zynga just got a $9 billion
valuation. Facebook could turn them off at any time. The iPhone could have
been turned off by Verizon or AT&T (NYSE: T). There are a lot of synergistic
partnerships that make sense for both parties that last a very long time.

We are diversifying our traffic because the internet is moving that way. We’re
aggressively focusing on diversifying traffic. We had 100,000 individual eHow
articles receive traffic in December alone just from Facebook. We receive
traffic from Twitter. We receive traffic from Digg. We receive traffic from
all across the web. We receive direct traffic and traffic from apps like
Livestrong. We are naturally diversifying our revenues—not because we’re
afraid of Google but because that’s where people are spending their time."

~~~
teej
He must have missed the memo. Apple and Zynga have contracts signed in blood
that keep them from beig "turned off". As we saw today, Google has no reason
to keep Demand Media's lights on.

~~~
robryan
Google would lose money to but they could take the hit, the demand media model
would become completely unviable.

~~~
stonemetal
But would Google loose money? If the big content farms shut down tomorrow how
would that effect Google? There would instantly be fewer ad views. Wouldn't
the fewer views be worth more (same number of people placing ads with fewer
places to put them) causing an increase in ad price to cover the difference?

~~~
robryan
Depends if there is a non demand media site for every search query where they
provided an answer to still capture the audience. Ads could be more expensive
up to a point, but many would probably not want to run ads more expensive than
the fairly cheap rates they get through the long tail of the display network.

------
nickbp
_If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome
extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them_

I wonder what those domains are.

~~~
mbrubeck
I'm especially curious about the 16% the new algorithm doesn't get rid of.

~~~
Duff
When folks here posted their blocklists, there were a few borderline sites
that I noticed. About.com is the notable one that comes to mind.

~~~
gwern
One of the surprises I encountered setting up my custom search engine* for
anime/manga searches was that I couldn't simply toss about.com into the
blacklist - because while they did mirror Wikipedia material, they _also_ had
hired or otherwise gotten a passel of legitimate manga & novel reviewers!

* [http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=009114923999563836576:1eor...](http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=009114923999563836576:1eorkzz2gp4)

------
kalvin
I googled "sharpen a knife" yesterday early afternoon and I'm pretty sure I
got ehow high on the front page. Now it's halfway down the second page.

Appropriately, the summary for eHow is: "on 3/31/2009 This article provides a
high level overview of sharpening, but doesn't provide enough detail to enable
a beginner to sharpen a knife ..."

Is there some tool SEO people use to compare results before/after Google
algorithm changes? Would be interesting to see.

~~~
jeffreyrusso
I don't know of any resource of ranking information, so you would need to have
collected the data beforehand. That being said, I've been collecting data on
some queries that showed a lot of eHow results, and I suspect something
related to knife sharpening may have been on my list (but I'll have to double
check.) Data is stored locally at my office; I'll post a quick update here
tomorrow if I have something interesting.

~~~
a5seo
I don't see any major dip on WiseGeek, which is directly-measured traffic:

<http://www.quantcast.com/wisegeek.com>

~~~
mvandemar
The results may be directly measured but they are not real time. Click on the
7 Day view and you can see that the latest numbers are from Feb 22, before the
change was rolled out. You would have to wait until Sunday or Monday, I would
think, before seeing the difference.

------
blauwbilgorgel
How you view this algo change, I guess depends on if you control websites that
might be classified as "content farms".

Job sites, classifieds sites, news archive sites, social sites like HN or
reddit etc.

There are a few legit businessmodels (as in, not against Google TOS) that feel
the heat from this update.

I am all for banning scraper sites, especially if they outrank the source. But
I don't like this update at all: There are still too many what-if's and
classification problems (where do you stop?). Do the giants get a free pass,
and do the new sites have to fight an uphill battle?

What do I tell new clients? I've seen the same with Keyword-In-Domain's
outranking more established sites. What is a whitehat SEO to do, but claim a
few Keyword-In-Domains. Now KID's start to become more and more greyhat. Not
because claiming a KID is so bad, but because Google has problem ranking
relevancy over KID's.

Having a curated content farm, in itself is not a problem and perfectly
whitehat. If its a good idea after this update, time will tell. I would really
like to know if curated content farms with an editorial staff will be hurt by
this update. I don't feel safe right now at all.

P.S. I guess I've found the first blackhat technique to combat being
classified a low-quality non-unique site. Google says to add value. So you
pull in content from multiple sources, instead of a single source, you article
spin the content a little, you add reviews and comments, and then you comment
on/review your own stories. Content farms will turn into comment/review farms,
and no one will be the wiser.

Also affiliate sites (Google always had you in her sights) and ecommerce sites
that used the supplied product descriptions will have a harder time now.
Realistically that would include smarter affiliate sites like hackerbooks.com
(no unique content, just an Amazon storefront for all Google cares)

------
jeffreyrusso
I have a decent list of queries I've been collecting data on to compare once
word came that a change was rolled out. This is an interesting one that I saw
in a comments thread somewhere...

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=how+to+renew+an+expir...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=how+to+renew+an+expired+passport&sourceid=navclient-
ff&rlz=1B3GGLL_enUS382US382&ie=UTF-8)

The Demand Media angle is really interesting too. I love the bit quoted in the
Searchengineland article from the CEO, wondering how they got tagged with the
"content farm" label. Pretty sure this is where _I_ first saw it...

<http://www.theawl.com/2010/11/my-summer-on-the-content-farm>

~~~
BrandonM
eHow still shows as number one for me in Google. It's nowhere to be found in
duckduckgo.

That eHow article actually seems quite helpful and straightforward. Is there a
problem with it? Hopefully Google can rank the results on a case-by-case basis
instead of condemning an entire site that actually has some useful material.

~~~
jeffreyrusso
This result looks the same to me as it always has - I see two eHow articles
above the State Department's passport site (one on how to renew an expired
passport, and one on how to renew an expired US passport in person.) While I'd
agree that they are decent as far as eHow content goes, I think the Dept of
State site really is a fantastic and authoritative resource that deserves to
be ranked higher. The DOS isn't doing themselves any favor with that crummy
title ("Passports"), but I'd have to say that this is a case of relevancy
winning out over authority in a nonsensical way.

------
ojbyrne
So a question came up tonight - "How to use an oscilliscope" - googled it and
no ehow. Wonderful.

------
DanielBMarkham
Today will be an interesting day to watch web stats.

I'm really happy they are doing something about the programming/scraping
sites. Asking the same question and getting the same answers from top 3 or 4
results was driving me bonkers.

Playing contrarian, though, I wonder how much of these changes are generated
by actual user feelings? I am concerned that there is a very vocal minority
(which is probably represented the most strongly inside the hacker community)
who is now starting to determine what makes a good site or not. If Google
starts getting swung around by 2% of its user base simply because they're the
loudest, I don't think that would necessarily result in a better product for
all -- even though so far, so good.

------
stcredzero
I'm not sure the "getting pregnant" advice was such a good example. Of course
people will laugh when advice involves sex. If the 4 paragraphs had their
order changed, so if the first two were switched with the last 2, and perhaps
the two paragraphs involving sex were edited down to one, the complaint
wouldn't hold water. I posit that such content is just a lightweight overview,
which is badly edited and doesn't have too many specific points of action.
Compared to other useless scraper content I've seen, it's not that bad.

------
jswinghammer
Neat the example I posted is fixed. In fact me talking about the search in
another thread shows up fairly high on the first page.

[http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=mysql+spatial+index+example+lft+rgt)

Only downside is that the explainextended.com article shows up below
stackoverflow.com which is too bad because that article would teach you far
more than the stackoverflow question would.

------
Zakuzaa
12% is HUGE. I fear _the inevitable_ false positives.

~~~
cosmicray
If you have a site triggering a false positive, maybe you need to go back and
look at your content, where it originates from and how.

------
Dramatize
Please please roll this out in Australia too.

~~~
kragen
Can you post some examples of searches that you think it will improve, along
with your current results from them?

------
cwbrandsma
does this get rid of expertsexchange? <cross fingers>

~~~
MatthewDP
I wish.

------
dools
Hopefully this means no more "Big resource gettin' bigger" in my search
results ...

------
ngsayjoe
See the drastic drop in alexa: <http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/efreedom.com#>

------
nickconfer
Anyone think the HuffingtonPost is glad it sold two weeks ago... Could you
imagine what a 12% shakeup did to a republisher.

~~~
zoomzoom
I bet huffpost gets a lot of direct traffic.

------
saturdaysaint
News results look much improved. Yellowpages.com and variants (yp.com)
continue to clutter up local search results.

------
blhack
Google is now as far ahead of their competition as they were in 2003.

~~~
jnhnum1
Until Bing starts getting "signals" from what users are clicking on Google
reflecting Google's algorithmic changes...

~~~
astrodust
Bing is now as far ahead as Google was ten clicks ago.

------
Charuru
I'm vaguely disturbed by all the talk about "sites people want to see fall".
That sounds like almost manual bias against certain sites to me. Didn't hear
anything about language analysis and figuring out what is high quality vs low
quality content.

~~~
matthiaswh
The official Google post on this update addresses that. This change is purely
academic, not based off feedback data from their recently launched spam tool.

~~~
Charuru
I didn't say that it was based off of the spam tool. But going on Google
clearly had targets. It's not like they couldn't figure out what farmers were
without the tool.

------
mkramlich
I wonder how much longer it will be after Google's changes go live that we
start to see the exact same changes "magically" appear in Bing as well.

 _cough_

~~~
eps
Does Bing have a problem with over-ranking content farms?

