Google's anti-scraper algorithm change launched

[djbaxter]

Algorithm change launched
by Matt Cutts
January 28, 2011

I just wanted to give a quick update on one thing I mentioned in my search engine spam post.

My post 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.

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.

Read more...

 

[djbaxter]

Confirmed: Google's Content Farm Algorithm Live! Sites Are Dropping!
by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable
Jan 28, 2011

A WebmasterWorld thread has a bunch of SEOs and Webmasters complaining about a recent and significant drop in traffic from Google. These reports all come from webmasters who have had stable rankings in Google and stable traffic from Google for years.

Update: Matt Cutts of Google confirmed this in a blog post at his personal blog.

There is some speculation that Google's new content spam detection and prevention techniques have kicked in impacting these particular web sites from ranking well in Google.

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[djbaxter]

Google’s Content Farm Algorithm Not Live Yet
by Barry Schwartz
Feb 1, 2011

Last Friday, I reported that Google has launched a new content based algorithm to improve their search quality. I made an assumption that this was related to the content farms algorithm being live, but I was wrong to make that assumption. After we spoke with Matt Cutts today, we learned that the new algorithm that went live last week is related to blocking low quality content scraper sites and not content farms.

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[bigcat1967]

I say GOOD, GOOD and GOOD!

I've been writing my own content and yet it takes a long time - it's all unique and the sites are something I am interested in. Also, I don't do many product sites - mostly informational. I'm glad G is doing this. My opinion only...

 

[MrPolarZero]

really interesting news! It's good to hear that Google has been doing these updates

 

[Markers909]

It started asking for captcha more and more every day.

 

[djbaxter]

That depends entirely on the type of search terms you enter. I rarely see the captcha.