Friday, May 06, 2011 at 11:22 AM
Webmaster level: All
In recent months we’ve been especially focused on helping people find high-quality sites in Google’s search results. The “Panda” algorithm change has improved rankings for a large number of high-quality websites, so most of you reading have nothing to be concerned about. However, for the sites that may have been affected by Panda we wanted to provide additional guidance on how Google searches for high-quality sites.
Our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals. Some publishers have fixated on our prior Panda algorithm change, but Panda was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year. In fact, since we launched Panda, we've rolled out over a dozen additional tweaks to our ranking algorithms, and some sites have incorrectly assumed that changes in their rankings were related to Panda. Search is a complicated and evolving art and science, so rather than focusing on specific algorithmic tweaks, we encourage you to focus on delivering the best possible experience for users.
What counts as a high-quality site?
Our site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find "high-quality" sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content. The recent "Panda" change tackles the difficult task of algorithmically assessing website quality. Taking a step back, we wanted to explain some of the ideas and research that drive the development of our algorithms.
Below are some questions that one could use to assess the "quality" of a page or an article. These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves as we write algorithms that attempt to assess site quality. Think of it as our take at encoding what we think our users want.
Of course, we aren't disclosing the actual ranking signals used in our algorithms because we don't want folks to game our search results; but if you want to step into Google's mindset, the questions below provide some guidance on how we've been looking at the issue:
- Would you trust the information presented in this article?
- Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
- Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
- Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
- Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
- Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
- Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
- How much quality control is done on content?
- Does the article describe both sides of a story?
- Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
- Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
- Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
- For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
- Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
- Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
- Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
- Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
- Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
- Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
- Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
- Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
Writing an algorithm to assess page or site quality is a much harder task, but we hope the questions above give some insight into how we try to write algorithms that distinguish higher-quality sites from lower-quality sites.
What you can do
We've been hearing from many of you that you want more guidance on what you can do to improve your rankings on Google, particularly if you think you've been impacted by the Panda update. We encourage you to keep questions like the ones above in mind as you focus on developing high-quality content rather than trying to optimize for any particular Google algorithm.
One other specific piece of guidance we've offered is that low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content.
We're continuing to work on additional algorithmic iterations to help webmasters operating high-quality sites get more traffic from search. As you continue to improve your sites, rather than focusing on one particular algorithmic tweak, we encourage you to ask yourself the same sorts of questions we ask when looking at the big picture. This way your site will be more likely to rank well for the long-term. In the meantime, if you have feedback, please tell us through our Webmaster Forum. We continue to monitor threads on the forum and pass site info on to the search quality team as we work on future iterations of our ranking algorithms.
308 comments:
1 – 200 of 308 Newer› Newest»Amit, your intention may be good. But, scrappers are starting new websites with our content. Everyday, we are filing DMCA report one after other. You first need to fix this problem before try to change the internet.
i always wonder this,why cant google decide which content is original and which is copied,cant u guys do that basing on some timestamp ?
if a content is being copied the its quite obviously its being published first,so depending upon which was in ur index first or some tech to know when it was published cant the original publishers and content scrapers be distinguished ?
"if a content is being copied the its quite obviously its being published first"
sry for the typo what i meant is
"if some content is being copied then its quite obvious that it is published first"
It happened to me too, Laura. I also filed a DMCA report and was told by Google that they weren't going to do anything. I don't think they really care as long as the copyright infringing site is making them money with Adsense ads. I hope you have better luck than I, but I'm hearing this from a lot of people and no one seems to be getting much help from Google.
Yeah whatever !
Just throw away the entire web if you follow these guidelines.
Truth is Google is not capable to determine what is quality in terms of content.
All those signals can apply to blogs, news sites, catalogs, forums, etc.
Content Farms were only guilty to make a buck on content, which is the forbidden fruit. Not fair they were the only ones on the spotlight.
Is "noindexing" a page the same as removing it for quality issues?
Regarding proving who owns content, I made a suggestion here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=56296fdbf843940a&hl=en
Basically, publishers should be able to present their new work to Google (maybe via webmaster tools) before publishing it publicly. This should solve most cases of content theft.
I also think that Webmaster Tools should provide some more clues to the poor quality content on the site. It shows duplicate descriptions and titles, it would be useful if it would flag poor quality content or even just cases were pages are too similar. I have been writing on the same topic for 4-5 years and no doubt there are times when I say similar things or write similar comments in reply to questions in the comments.
Webmaster Tools really could help people that are striving to make their sites better quality.
In the last month I have made over a 1000 changes to my site, but still seeing lower quality sites appear above me (some are so obviously re-written in poor English it is silly).
I have removed around 400 articles now, following my own criteria for quality. Most were from my hobby days when I was just using free content to create a website, long before I thought I would be making a business of it. Many were short news blogs which at the time were interesting but now pretty irrelevant (unless you like old news). Now my issue is with other people that have copied my content (although I am still finding some articles that have been partially duplicated).
Still much to do, many articles to re-write simply because they have been copied so much in the last 4 years I cannot DMCA everything, so may as well write a new version! Oh well.
That is another question though. If a page once ranked well, but now post-Panda does not, will making it unique and of high quality help, or is the content itself somehow considered lost and therefore the URL abandoned? I have a few articles I plan to re-write completely just because it would be easier than trying to re-write parts and still make it all tie together just as well. Still lots to do. Here's hoping my site recovers. I have been given an ultimatum today by my wife to recover our business or look for alternative employment! Got 4 months.
Actually, I think Google is making some great progress this year. In the past several months we've seen our redcort.com web site substantially improve in rankings where we actually should rank well.
For years we've tried to learn the rules and follow Google's advice to build a high quality site that warrants a high search ranking. It's a joy to finally be in the top 1-3 rankings after being stuck in the bottom 10 for several years below spammy and generally poor results sites!
Thanks for articles like these even more so for rewarding those efforts.
Anthony: At least one Googler has said that noindexing is as good as removing.
He also suggested 'noindex, follow' so that a page could be improved and 'reindexed' but meanwhile not be forgotten by Google.
You and others might find this Panda Survival Guide helpful:
http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/google-panda-farmer
Thanks for the additional information.
Our site managementhelp.org is a business model that falls in the cracks of the guidelines about generating articles -- but has been a very substantive site for 15 years.
We're a Library of links (not a "farm" of links). We have experts in major topics who review/vet articles on other sites and decide whether they’re high-quality or not. If they are, we link to them. We are judicious in our use of ads.
On each of the major topics is a Table of Contents organized by the topic's expert. We organize the subtopics so the visitor can quickly grasp the components of the topic and how they're organized, in addition to following the links in each topic. Each expert knows the historical and foundational info on each topic. However, there are some topics that we haven't associated with experts, so we're going to noindex/nofollow them.
We've been a Pagerank 7 site for many years with many topics ranking on the first page of search results (strategic planning, business planning, Boards of Directors, coaching, etc.), until the April Panda. We host substantive articles written by our small staff of volunteers. We don’t primarily generate articles, rather we find them, organize them for others, so we're not sure how the Panda guidelines apply.
I'd quibble with a few of the points in the checklist:
1) "Redundant" content, for example: We have a general article on Venice vaporetto water buses, an article on vaporetto fares, an article on vaporetto routes, and articles on buying tickets and using automated ticket machines. Is there overlap? Sure. But each article serves a different user need, and our traffic reports show that all are valuable to our readers. Trouble is, can an algorithm understand that? Maybe, maybe not.
2) Recognition of a site as an authority: A reader who's searching Google for "paris sewers museum" or "venice people mover" probably doesn't KNOW any authoritative sites on that topic. (That's why he or she is using a search engine instead of going directly to a trusted site.)
3) "Shallow" or thin pages: Sometimes, it's appropriate for a page to be "shallow" or "thin" (as in a photo gallery, a dictionary definition, or some of Google Webmaster Central's own help pages).
4) I'd like to see Google put less weight on brand authority and more on page content. That way, we might see fewer Google Search results for keyword-driven stub pages from corporate megasites that spew out empty "review" and other UGC pages by the millions.
Oops -- I should've written that we are going to "noindex/follow" the topics that do not have experts associated with them.
I think that Microsoft and Yahoo are rubbing their hands together in delight at the big clanger Google has dropped. Just watch Bing grab a bigger percentage of the search market. Its share is creeping up already.
Even while striving to be objective, I can answer all those questions positively, except one: We're not a "household name." But we have 30+ years of experience in the field we serve, we are experienced and principled journalists with a focus on serving the reader, and we are recognized by hundreds (perhaps thousands) of doctors as "the" source of patient education in our niche. Still, apparently, it is not enough. Content providers would do well to reverently consider this list, yet there is still a missing piece.
I noticed that a lot of the questions are just duplicates and simply a rewording of the aforementioned ideas.
In short. This articles fails it's own goals.
Sriker, no its not nearly that easy. First, google probably does attempt to go by their indexing timestamp to help determine who produced the content first... But what if google crawls and indexes the copy before the original? Sure you can then have a timestamp on the page that shows the original, but then a scrapper could just copy the article, then change the local timestamp. Thats one reason why google recommends social bookmarking and posting a link to your article on facebook...etc, that will help google to try and index your (original) article first.
The other issue (and i see this as a design flaw) is that this update causes google to rank a site by the quality rating of the entire site. To me, this says that a site ranked higher in quality can copy your article, then rank higher for it than you do, even if google indexed yours first and knows your copy is the original. They may have some checks in place to prevent this, but purely from the information given, this may be a possibility.
Amit I went through your checklist - thanks for that - and three things jumped out at me as points of concern.
Spelling: I trust that when you take this into account, you considering location (e.g. Canadian spelling of colour vs. US spelling)?
Authority / Authoritative source: this concerns me in particular in terms of how the algorithm will determine authority. For example the small business community has recognized our site (canadaone.com) as an authoritative source, but we have no off-line presence. Will "brand fame" now factor into search results?
Redundant content: I realize that content farms have created a problem for all content-rich sites, but am very reluctant to give up the ability to have content themes, which would include articles that are similar in nature -- not to falsely draw in traffic, but because adult learners need to be exposed to certain ideas 6-10 times in order to really learn. Especially as a magazine it's important to put out new information on repeating themes, bringing in new trends and ideas.
Julie
This article is unmitigated prevarication.
The vast majority of items listed in the bullet points cannot be measured algorithmically and are therefore bald-faced misdirection -- pure lying.
The Panda update killed many great sites, such as MerckManuals, The British Medical Journal, and AskTheBuilder. This post is simply another round of Google avoiding a public admission of failure by spamming the 'net with more press releases touting their supposed success.
It it outright dishonesty. We don't want more public relations from Google -- we want more honesty.
All of this sounds quite reasonable when you take it in isolation - Google sounds like it is trying to do the right thing by everyone.
Unfortunately it essentially means nothing because Google then gives inordinate weight to social media and external linking (both of which are easy to manipulate).
The sad thing is that the real "authority" on many subjects is often not the biggest brand, but Google seems hell bent on only accepting those with the resources to manipulate the system as the authority.
Sadly, the more we follow Google's advice on content, the more we fall behind the "gamers". Thanks for the advice Google, but until you stop saying one thing and doing another, we're just as well off not even bothering to read your advice!
Thanks for sharing these things with us.
Here's the problem, Google wants to serve quality content, but when we focus on what Google wants, we get pushed back. After we are pushed back, Google says don't focus on what we want-focus on delivering quality content.
You are talking in circles.
I've been in the cabinet manufacturing business for thirty years. Three years ago I started posting articles with "quality" content on my blog called "Fix My Cabinet." I AM AN EXPERT AND AN AUTHORITY IN THIS NICHE. Every article I write is very specific and offers expert advice.
I want to throw up every time eHow out ranks me with a compilation of trash.
eHow Example: How To Build A Cabinet
1) Get some wood
2) Nail it together with an electric drill
I lost over 45% of my traffic during March and April.
It's discouraging Amit for those of us who really are experts to be treated like as if our contributions online are worthless.
I read that Google suggested that sites be more like an Apple product when it comes to looks. Anything specific, iPod, iPhone, iPad?
I started a site jov.io a month ago. I'm still waiting for my first click-through from Google. I know a month is not a long time, but to get zero traffic is pretty discouraging. It's a lovely little site, with a good ue and entirely original content. Is it not also important to support new sites, that are not from a name you'd trust? Did I miss the bandwagon?
My suggestion is to through a few clicks through to junior sites to see how the crowd reacts.
All perfectly reasonable - but the reality is that your algorithm is still penalising many sites that tick all those boxes and have done for years.
On top of that I fail to see how you can decide a site scraping content from elsewhere *does* meet those quality guidelines while the site they have ripped it from does not.
James Crowley
CTO, TechEye
Thanks for the advice. We've had such a race to the bottom in so many fields (I'm a trial lawyer -- I'm sure you know how horrid and spammy that gets), that's it good to see action taken in reducing the effect of re-writing news stories as 250 word blog posts with targeted anchor text.
As I'm sure you agree, there's still lots work to do, but I think you're on the right track.
I agree with Srikar, we have been running a performance SEO business for some time and we have noticed that whilst most of our clients have been fine, notably one has been hit quite badly due mainly in part by duplicated content.
The site is question is a portal so therefore dervies much of its content from users. So how do you police this? How is this managable?
If you have 5000 pages being created every month how can you determine who has been original and who has been cutting and pasting.
The use of NOFOLLOWS does not help either as the whole point of creating communities is to have quality information that is relevant, fresh and can be found via Google.
The whole issue of duplicate content needs to be addressed in a much smarter way and should not need to involve the use of third party sites like Facebook.
Google needs to get a grip on this and fast.
Is spelling in reader comments an issue? I just ran a spell check on a page that has around 400 comments, and many mistakes in those. This page has lost around 80 of its daily visitors.
One low qualty content affects the whole website?
I think it's not so smart.
It does not make much sense does it. In my niche it really seems to be advantageous at the moment not to have a community or comments. Shorted articles with good spelling seem to be better than longer articles with lots of discussion and engagement. Something ain't right!
Guys read his post again, they are saying how good article sites should ideally be, doesn't mean they can accurately pick them. You can guess that BBC and Amazon can do no wrong of course and send them all the traffic, no matter how remote the query is. If you think that Google can see if the article mentioned the other side of the argument or not algorithmically...
The other questions to Google:
Why drastically penalize sites all of the sudden with a experimental--at best--algorithm?
Why not say this 6 months before the algo change? The eHows and Wisegeeks must have obeyed your previous "guidelines" since they ranked very high for so long. No?
If we 'fixed' the site, why do we keep going down? Maybe we didn't get 100% right but many are noticing that the more positive changes we make the lower the site goes. When will you take in consideration the changes?
Some of your new advice goes well against your previous advice, especially when it comes to boderline internal dupes and pages like user profiles and tags. We were told that Google will try to pick the best page and who knew that user profiles can cause our sites to tank? Is it fair to have to file for bankruptcy because you listened to Google's wrong advice? With 65% or more in the search market you have that power but seem to not want the responsibility that goes with it.
They are livelihoods at stake Google, and any major disruption requires more planning and notice. If I buy 100 sitewide links I know I can get thrown to page 400 at anytime but this is not the same. You have blown this one even if big brands are jumping from joy. [/rant]
For those of you yet to receive your patent pending Google Enigma machine an English summary of this press release is accessible below.
"Hello Webmasters,
The top of the tree has been picked clean of all fruit. We maintain a search monopoly in most countries around the globe, we failed to penetrate the Chinese search market (likely the true origin of the name "Panda"), and thus we've maximized our forward growth potential. In light of these limited growth conditions our engineers were forced to reprogram our automated profit scavengers to descend back down the money tree and stake claim to all of the fruit from the middle branches down to the rotting fruit lying in the grass. Unless you're a world renown content authority, an astrophysicist employed by NASA, a 13 year old Wikipedia contributor, a Mumbai based researcher for About.com, or any of our other designated corporate media partners we will regrettably no longer be requiring your digital web content at this time. In the event that our Rubik's Cube of self-serving webmaster quality guidelines changes Larry or Sergey will step out on to the balcony of the tallest white tower in the land and blow into our fabled Trumpet of Transparency™.
Got questions? Are you flabbergasted by the stark contradictions in the terms laid out in this press release and Google's "actual" search index? Well sorry we don't have a customer service department or any employee at the "Plex" that currently gives a damn.
Sincerely the Google "Quality" Team."
Legal Disclaimer: This post is a digital parody of Google. The content of this post should in no way be construed as factual (wink wink).
Amit, only if you were in our shoes then you would have understood our pain with all your changes. For one of my sites which was authority on topic of "nails" since 2000 it is now nowhere to be found on Google. You guys spammed my inbox stating I was not monetizing it with Adsense and there were places where I should place ads, so I placed ads and now I get this BS that we shouldn't have ads this and that?
Can you guys be more clear? I have 30 years of experience on topic of "nails" I am an authority. But I am being overtaken by some random junk ehow articles.
Panda update in whole has hurt a lot and i repeat a LOT OF great sites. You guys just won't admit.
I have a question regarding spelling, editorial control and gramatic: If I have a blog with many commenters, is this meaning that I need to fix every single error in the comments of my readers? If so,I have to say one thing: FAIL!
I believe I'm stupider having read this than when I started.
I can see a lot of low-quality content on YouTube.com and you said that low-quality content in parts of a site can impact the whole domain. But, YouTube seems one of the winners of this update. So, "google fellow", maybe there is a "bug" in the algorithm? ;D
always wonder..
Zamre Bin Ab. Wahab
I am concerned about one specific suggestion, eliminate "lower quality" pages so it does not effect the rest of the site. Our site historycentral.com has been on the web since 1995, and is a history site. 80 pct of the content has been written by us over a 25 year period. Since so much of it has been up for so long, many of the entries have been copied, and of course that hurt many of the page rankings. The other 15pct our original source documents , most of which we put up first, but some not, all of which are integral to the study of history. Even if they are duplicate content they are relevant to our users exploring the various issues of history, and there is no reason that if we include a speech or other public document that google determines is duplicate content our site as a whole should suffer
Thanks
Let's see how this blog post rates according to Google's recommendations.
* Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Definitely not. This is a public relations piece which ventures far from the truth.
* Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
Amit may be an expert, but this post is the very definition of shallow. It presents no useful information. It's worse than an eHow page.
* Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Definitely. This post is yet another regurgitation of Google's standard content-free public relations platitudes.
* Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
This article purposefully avoids containing any facts.
* Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
Based upon Amit's unwilling to provide honest answers, it is pretty clear that he isn't "driven by genuine interests of readers of the site." This is a bait-and-switch page. The readers came looking for information and were delivered only prevarication.
* Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
Nothing in this post is original. This is simply a mashup of half-truths and misdirection which Google's PR droids have already posted elsewhere.
* Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
This page provides no value at all.
* How much quality control is done on content?
This article has no content to QC.
* Does the article describe both sides of a story?
Absolutely not.
* Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Blogger can be considered an authority on Google, but it can not be trusted to communicate honestly on that topic.
* Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
Blogger content is mass-produced by a huge number of creators, many of which do not give their individual pages significant attention or care.
* Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
It looks like a cheap cut and paste job from Google's webmaster forums.
* Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Definitely not. Blogger is a spam pit.
* Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Definitely not. This article is content-free. It provides absolutely no useful information.
* Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Definitely not. This article eschews analysis, and in fact recommends against analysis.
* Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Definitely not. I have wasted enough time here. I would hate to be responsible for another person being subjected to this soul-sucking post.
* Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
There is no content.
* Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
No one but Google would publish this drivel.
* Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
There are no specifics and there is no helpful information.
* Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
There are no details.
* Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
The comments are full of users complaining about this content.
Clearly, the entire blogger domain should be penalized for hosting low-quality pages such as this one.
what is it?
Yet another useless post.
The issue has never been with publishers writing quality content.
The issue has always been Google giving Adsense accounts to content scrapers and other worthless sites.
Does everyone who signs up for Blogspot deserve an adsense account?
Google started the problem and now they are punishing small publishers because of it. Rather than changing the entire search algorithm, why not do a better job with adsense and not let it be abused and be the reason why a countless number of worthless sites generate revenue?
The reason why?
Because Google still makes money.
@matt , @amit
You guys look proud of this update coz of the QUALITY results in your engine,but hey is that really happening ?
what about the most rated issue ?
The scraped content is still out ranking the original,so what is all this fuss about ?
Dint you guys knew this bull shit algo would affect genuine legitimate webmasters also ?
If you had ethics you wont do anything that would affect a legitimate webmaster even at the cost of 10 black hats.
But you don't give a shit,do you ?
Have you heard to yourself ?
I mean really,one of your statement
"Even a single low Quality content can affect the whole website"
seriously,say that aloud and listen to yourself-in the shoes of a webmaster.
But hey everyone did that,searched,picked and NO INDEXED,Deleted,Redirected every article they thought was low quality but no one has seen any change yet,may be every one is missing on that "ONE LOW QUALITY ARTICLE" that is still affecting the whole website.
As you can tell, this post isn't all that popular. Truth be told most of my websites seemed to have survived but all of my blogs took big hits. And I'm not the only one.
Forget about the scrapers; it seems that Google has gone to war against bloggers, most of whom are writing original content, and that's somewhat unfair. In the past Google stated they had no problems with blogs; that doesn't seem to be true anymore.
I'm not going to say there was a lot of double talk in this post. I will say it was unsatisfying and almost insulting because, as you can see, most of us believe we're doing the right thing, and we got penalized anyway.
How about pictures/photos websites? Will Panda understand this? Sometimes there's no need for a text!
Hey Amit!
You know what. You guys would have done a much better job if you would have done this panda update manually (though it would have been slow and expensive). Your panda algorithm is not accurate and you have penalized many genuine websites because of this. Seems like you guys you were in a hurry, under the media pressure to take an action.
"Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?"
Like in the SERPS?
Grammar Error:
"Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?"
...an excessive number of ads...
or
... an excessive amount of advertising...
Countable noun error.
One simple way to remove poor spelling and inarticulate comments added to sites that users can comment on is police language
Swearing, various other crude or unecessary words. There is bnot alot more frustrating than reading comments on sites and then the mud flinging and swearing appears. This does not help the author of the content nor the reader.
Can you tell me why for this query google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=electronic+circuits&aq=f&aqi=g5&aql=f&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=226172e42eeb41c7 google is ranking:
1 - uoguelph.ca/~antoon/ = moved from such a long time... useless page
2 - solorb.com/elect/ = 90% of the page is with external links, useless page
3 - discovercircuits.com/list.htm = almost 90% of the page filled with external links, useless page
4 - ee.oulu.fi/~arik/schematics.html = 100% external links, USELESS CONTENT
5 - coolcircuit.com = images next to adsense => against adsense TOS
6 - utwired.engr.utexas.edu/rgd1/ = I want to see "electronic circuits" not the theory!
7 - andythelwell.com/blobz/ = same as 6
8 - free-electronic-circuits.com = ZERO usability, where is the menu?
Almost all the 8 websites rank on the first page for "electronic circuits" query and almost all of them have low, low, low quality content, ZERO usability, adsense above the fold or agains the TOS, they do not deserve to be on the first page!
Can you tell us why those sites deserve to be in top 10? I bet you cannot!
Sites that worry about having too many ads and whether they should be removed will take some comfort that this site is celebrating record breaking visitors and adsense earnings:
http://grownupgeek.com/pandora-announces-comedy-stations
Once again Google offers a really useful guide to the mindset needed to create quality website content.
Sure every site owner/webmaster wants to rank well in Google organic SERPs and those of us who go the extra lengths to produce original content are always frustrated by those who game the system. But I do not blame Google for this.
Indeed if as much attention was paid to unique content as there is to gaming Google, the Internet would improve by leaps and bounds.
Thank you again Google.
I have not seen any evidence to suggest that ads above the fold are disliked. One of my competitors has 3 adsense ads above the fold and poorly written copy and is still no.1 or a search term. It seems that SEO is certainly not dead, many sites are doing better with poor content and good SEO.
I understand the goal to clean up web spam, automated and semi managed content farms but many of the bullet points listed here still rank well.
Doorway pages, written with heavy kw copy in poor English. Doorway hubs that have reciprocal links to each other ranking well.
Key word domains with copied content with domain names from which they copied still in the content, ranking above older, legitimate websites ranking well.
Sites I would never give my credit card to.
And so on and so on...
Seems to that the Panda update has missed the mark and hurt smaller sites. It is simple to point out sites that have been hurt that would stand up to this litmus test of meeting the criteria of giving users what they want.
Haha .. just saw this post from my friend.
I think this post has raised lot of questions for google to answer.
http://streetchitchat.blogspot.com/2011/05/googles-panda-algorithm-experiment-gone.html
Totally agree. I will be using this guide to improve mt SEO for my forum. You can check out my forum here - http://www.advertisehotspot.info/
thank you
So to sum up webmaster central:
To ensure high rankings:
Somehow ensure that your site is a recognized authority on a topic
Somehow ensure that all your visitors know the name of your site and recognise it before reading it
Somehow ensure that every visitor to your site would not complain to anyone about anything
Have editorial meetings about what Google means by 'short'
Hire a designer to mimic the Apple website design
For each page in your website you must:
Hire a top notch writer who has the experience and ability to write your content on any subject contained in your site
Ensure the writer takes 'great care' when writing and details the subject in great detail
Hire another top notch writer to argue the point of the first
Hire an editor to confirm it meets the style and factual accuracy guidelines and put both articles together
Footnote your article to give a complete and comprehensive guide to the subject
Submit it to Encyclopedia Britannica, Time and Random House to see if it passes their guidelines
Only then can you submit it to Google (who has written nothing at all except dodgy patents IMHO) so that every scraper and webmaster in the whole world can take it, spin it and rank higher for it than you.
You then file bankruptcy and spend your days sitting on empty iMac box in a street begging for spare change with a trusty dog by your side.
There has always been an issues with duplicate and poorly produced content and of course all of the search engines needs to find a way of dealing with the issues.
I don't always agree but keep up the good work guys.
Richard Smith
What I find really funny is that the person hogging no.1 position for a keyword phase in my niche has an about page that reads "This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself......"
It is no.1 because of the network of sites that link to it, all using the same theme, all with the same backlink profiles from blogs, free directories and social sites. By studying this site I am slowly learning how easy it is to manipulate Google. Impressive. Oh, this site is also a re-write of other sites, and English is not the webmasters first language either!
I'm one of the many whose traffic is down 60%.
HERE'S HOW I WISH YOU HAD MADE THE CHANGE TO YOUR ALGORITHM.
1. Before you make the change, get more clear on what you mean by "low-quality" --
It's clear that you didn't even really know what you meant low-quality. We aren't seeking the technical detail for spammers to game the system -- we want to know enough to compare your standards with our sites.
2. Realize that not all visitors go to sites to read research papers --
You gave many guidelines about what "low-quality" meant. The guidelines are what we PhD's use to rate research papers! You're acting as if all visitors want research papers -- most don't.
Have a separate search engine for research papres, products, libraries, etc.
3. In your design, install robust systems to detect sites with copyright infriingements, and then rank those sites accordly --
Many of the complaints that you're reading are from sites that are being plagiarized -- and the plagiarizers are benefitting a great deal from the Panda change. Didn't you know this would happen?
4. Tell us what you're planning and by when --
That doesn't mean that spammers have to know the details. That doesn't mean that you have to satisfay all of us. But after you've gotten clear on what "low-quality" is (see Step 1), then tell us what you mean. Then we can be prepared for the effect it might have on us.
5. Keep forums like this open, but earlier. Respect us, listen to us and learn --
Again, you're not just making a technical change -- this is people's lives. No company, no matter how large, can know everything. Keep getting our opinions, respect them and learn from them.
It's clear from the way that the Panda was handled that you had little knowledge or sensitivity to the carnage you would leave. You've traumatized 10s or maybe 100s of thousands of people. Didn't you know that would happen?
Very large companies often make at least one a major public relations goof at some point in its life cycle. Let's hope you learn from this one. You are so large now that your actions aren't just product design actions -- they're societal. Take responsibility for this.
You could gain a lot of goodwill by rolling back some of the changes, and making them the right way next time.
"excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?"
It's funny to hear that since Google is doing quite the opposite; instead of showing us relevant search results (main content) we have to watch ads only on the first page. How pathetic..
"It's clear from the way that the Panda was handled that you had little knowledge or sensitivity to the carnage you would leave. You've traumatized 10s or maybe 100s of thousands of people. Didn't you know that would happen?"
-------
Carter, you are missing the worst part, the Google Gods (~10%-14% away from not being Gods btw) have not re-run the Panda algorithm, so no matter what changes you made the site is still penalized. They are so sure that everyone was running a content farm and forget about the false positives and that some were stupid to listen to their pre-Panda advice.
This, of course is the same group of arrogant people that brought us MFA spam and the true content farms. They ranked them so high for ages and Adsense monetized them, that everyone wanted one. Now they say they got it right so starve. No appeals. Uh, huh.
Step away from the computer and take a walk in the park or something. If you have been ranking 'low quality' pages for 10 years, you can't be that smart when it comes to search, no? Don't even bother explaining at all the next time, not that 2+ months after slamming sites a few idiotic guidelines can be called an explanation. My site has no articles, 2+2=4 and JFK died in a certain day, I can't include "other points of view" to please a stupid algorithm.
Where is long expected google +1 button and its big influence on recognizing quality of sites?
Ana is wellbeing writer
Matt P. Monarch said "a Mumbai based researcher for About.com, or any of our other designated corporate media partners"...
very amusing piece but I have to address this flat-out wrong statement.
for starters, any Mumbai based writer for About.com will be a highly qualified, talented writer who deserves the job, like the rest of the skilled About.com writers from around the globe - they are not an outsourced content farm.
And secondly, they are not a designated media partner having special favors - I wish! Like everyone else, you only find About.com content at the top of your search when the Guide for that site has written good, well optimized content. We're all as frustrated with Google as everyone else.
good intention.
Zamre Bin Ab. Wahab
How to Game Google Search - Case Study:
In this case study, I have used the site http://bit.ly/fUvgHg as the subject under review. It started up in Dec'2010 and now it gets around 300,000 unique visits per month. This is quite an achievement in less than 5 months on the web with no social element, just by the draw of articles alone. The first article was released on Dec 1st 2010 according to their website.
http://bit.ly/iMQfqS
Have a look at the stats here.
http://bit.ly/iwei7C
http://bit.ly/leHcHT
Here are steps you could take to game the Google search algorithm.
1. Buy domain name that is old.
http://bit.ly/fUvgHg was on sale for $5000 in Sedo, they bought this domain in 2010 but we can see that it has been registered for years. Make sure to hide your domain details (private registration) so that you can start multiple domains with a similar name.
2. Advertise for cheap writers.
One of the ads they used is in a Philippines forum. Here is the ad link.
http://www.istorya.net/forums/jobs/349286-part-time-article-writers.html#post9000398
http://www.istorya.net/forums/jobs/343293-part-time-article-writers-p15-per-150-worded-original-article.html
According to the ad, they are paying around $1 per 500-word article, very cheap right! This is the best part, writers are explicitly told that they can copy/ rewrite other articles on the web. They provide guidelines for rewriting articles.
Here is another link where a writer placed an ad, apparently this writer also wrote cheap articles for http://bit.ly/fUvgHg.
http://www.onlinejobs.ph/jobseekers/info/44635
Since Dec 2010, they have been releasing 15 articles per day.
3. Buy lots and lots of backlinks.
Just see how they accumulated thousands of back links in just 5 months.
http://bit.ly/iHikqc
They also created a blank slide link in YouTube to improve their SEO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZAWdm8VTLE
4. Copy a Wordpress template from another website.
http://bit.ly/fUvgHg uses the similar Wordpress template that a similar site, http://bit.ly/gbG4FX, is using.
Now, if you search for "Difference Between NBC and MSNBC", the second and fourth results are from http://bit.ly/gbG4FX and http://bit.ly/fUvgHg with the same title and similar description.
5. Sell Ads
And finally, you have successfully gamed Google and it is the time to sell ads.
They placed an ad here at $120 for 30 days.
http://buysellads.com/buy/detail/56411
So, it's obvious, once you game the system, others will likely follow suit.
Just take a look at established as well as new copycat websites with similar names topping Google search results. If you do little research, you will find that the same person/company started multiple websites using the name "difference between".
1. http://bit.ly/fUvgHg
2. http://bit.ly/gbG4FX
3. http://bit.ly/gyyqaL
4. http://bit.ly/mrkwVG
5. http://bit.ly/kxHgWl
6. http://bit.ly/iqT8WN
http://bit.ly/fUvgHg started up in Dec 2010 currently gets around 300,000 users per month, and they encourage writers to copy articles from other websites.
Well done Google, Amit and team Panda.
The idea behand the points here makes sense but I can't help but being a bit sceptical like many other commentators here. Of course Google doesn't get it always right. For example I get irritated every time I get About.com articles right on top when I search. In my opinion About.com articles are not very high quality and certainly not authoritative. Furthermore the user experience is poor and the articles always full of intrusive Google ads!
At the same time I am glad to say my blog wasn't effected negatively at all, on the contrary it has grown. so good to know our blog is considered high quality which I definatley agree with.
I really wonder if you people at Google live in a vacuum, or some alternate universe/world the rest of us don’t know about, because your general lack of common sense and touch with the people you serve is pitiful. Do you ever leave the plex? Do you ever look around at different webmaster forums and online sales places targeting webmasters? Frankly, I don’t think you do, because if you did, then you’d realize just how much goes on to game the very system you use. Take for instance, your stance and idea that we should post our original content to social media sites like Facebook.
Did you know there are people from China and India more than willing to drum up 10,000 likes on Facebook pages for measly sums of cash, many times less than $50.00 US? Now, if we take this one-step further, how long do you think it will be until they put the scheme together, for Google Chrome, which offers 10,000 down votes for your chosen website? If this doesn’t tell you how monumentally stupid some of your social media “signal” ideas are, with their manipulability, then nothing will. What kind of idiots think the solution for a failing search algorithm is opening it up causing yet more holes for exploitation? For as highly educated as you people are, you surely lack practical common sense.
You see, Dear Google, here is our issue. The honest webmasters keep listening to your propaganda PR spinning BS like spun on this page. We labor, pour blood sweat and tear into our work, follow your questions and guidelines, and in the end, guess what happens. That’s right, exactly the same crap that continually happens, because no matter what, when we come back full circle, it’s the scrape sites, the copy and paste content sites, MFA websites monetized with Adsense, and all the rest buying thousands of back links that wind up ranking higher than we do. What do you give us when we ask questions? More questions. The issue is point blank plain and simple, we’re tired of having warm sunshine pumped up our digital bottoms and your PR spins, like this, about why it’s our fault our stuff doesn’t rank, when in the end, it’s yours for allowing the games.
Take about any product or service, do a search, and what do we find? Most times, we find copy and paste marketing material paraded as a “review”. Sure, that’s good user experience when a user wants honest critique for a buying decision right? Then when we go to the website, what do we find? We find a website monetized with Adsense, yet you wonder why so many point fingers at you for questionable practices.
Removal of such content should be simple. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out comparing pages within a database for amount of similarity is the answer. Heck, I can easily do it through SERP results. Pick your favorite product, or info product, do a Google search, go to the top listing on the SERP, copy and paste about 2 sentences from that website, return to Google, paste that into the search box in quotes, and voila. I’ve found thousands and tens of thousands of copies this way you could drop from the index. Why? Because the BULK of those websites are nothing more than marketing material written by a company to appear as review and paid self votes. Are the minds at Google smart enough to figure this out? Apparently not, because if they had, things like this wouldn’t happen, and MFA websites would all but dry up and disappear.
How about the typical data sent by website servers during HTTP connections? That’s right, typical website server setups already include the capability for sending file creation date information. Hey, guess what, there’s a timestamp method to identify original content at the time of content creation directly on the server. Are the minds at Google smart enough to figure this out? Again, sadly, apparently not, as Google still touts depending on third party websites like Facebook ensuring our original content gets first index.
You sirs, to me, are no better anymore than Microsoft. They grew too big for their britches and decided to do what they wanted, forgot what the people wanted, and you “fellows” are no different. You make changes that impact lives, children, and livelihoods, touting how we should follow these ridiculous questions, yet despite doing that from practically day one, rankings still elude us, but you need that whole vague “quality content” to hide behind so you don’t look as idiotic as you truly are. The problem is, throughout the years of PR spins, the warm sunshine pounded up our digital bottoms, we’ve grown wise to your ways, and your slip in the share of search pie clearly shows it.
Wake up Google, heed what befell Microsoft at the hands of website developers; else, you could find yourselves in a spot like Microsoft did where developers began refusing to support their buggy browser rendering, and mostly stopped designing sites fixing display issues in IE browsers, AND a further grass roots movement that suggested EVERYONE gets a real browser. Keep up the stupidity, and you might find the following quote on many websites:
“We’re tired of supporting Google, their encouragements of gaming the system through Adsense websites ranking higher than legitimate websites, their failure implementing easy date stamping technologies identifying original versus scraped content, and their continued gravitation towards brands, get a real search engine, drop by Yahoo or Bing”
Don’t delude yourselves that because you have such large market share in search that there aren’t plenty of other ways to drive traffic to such websites. Go ahead, keep up with the stupidity, and you might one day soon find out exactly what I’m talking about.
I really wonder if you people at Google live in a vacuum, or some alternate universe/world the rest of us don’t know about, because your general lack of common sense and touch with the people you serve is pitiful. Do you ever leave the plex? Do you ever look around at different webmaster forums and online sales places targeting webmasters? Frankly, I don’t think you do, because if you did, then you’d realize just how much goes on to game the very system you use. Take for instance, your stance and idea that we should post our original content to social media sites like Facebook.
Did you know there are people from China and India more than willing to drum up 10,000 likes on Facebook pages for measly sums of cash, many times less than $50.00 US? Now, if we take this one-step further, how long do you think it will be until they put the scheme together, for Google Chrome, which offers 10,000 down votes for your chosen website? If this doesn’t tell you how monumentally stupid some of your social media “signal” ideas are, with their manipulability, then nothing will. What kind of idiots think the solution for a failing search algorithm is opening it up causing yet more holes for exploitation? For as highly educated as you people are, you surely lack practical common sense.
You see, Dear Google, here is our issue. The honest webmasters keep listening to your propaganda PR spinning BS like spun on this page. We labor, pour blood sweat and tear into our work, follow your questions and guidelines, and in the end, guess what happens. That’s right, exactly the same crap that continually happens, because no matter what, when we come back full circle, it’s the scrape sites, the copy and paste content sites, MFA websites monetized with Adsense, and all the rest buying thousands of back links that wind up ranking higher than we do. What do you give us when we ask questions? More questions. The issue is point blank plain and simple, we’re tired of having warm sunshine pumped up our digital bottoms and your PR spins, like this, about why it’s our fault our stuff doesn’t rank, when in the end, it’s yours for allowing the games.
Take about any product or service, do a search, and what do we find? Most times, we find copy and paste marketing material paraded as a “review”. Sure, that’s good user experience when a user wants honest critique for a buying decision right? Then when we go to the website, what do we find? We find a website monetized with Adsense, yet you wonder why so many point fingers at you for questionable practices.
Removal of such content should be simple. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out comparing pages within a database for amount of similarity is the answer. Heck, I can easily do it through SERP results. Pick your favorite product, or info product, do a Google search, go to the top listing on the SERP, copy and paste about 2 sentences from that website, return to Google, paste that into the search box in quotes, and voila. I’ve found thousands and tens of thousands of copies this way you could drop from the index. Why? Because the BULK of those websites are nothing more than marketing material written by a company to appear as review and paid self votes. Are the minds at Google smart enough to figure this out? Apparently not, because if they had, things like this wouldn’t happen, and MFA websites would all but dry up and disappear.
How about the typical data sent by website servers during HTTP connections? That’s right, typical website server setups already include the capability for sending file creation date information. Hey, guess what, there’s a timestamp method to identify original content at the time of content creation directly on the server. Are the minds at Google smart enough to figure this out? Again, sadly, apparently not, as Google still touts depending on third party websites like Facebook ensuring our original content gets first index.
***This one should have posted before the above one***
Thanks for that. After following a lot of discussions to that topic my own list was similar to yours. I'm sure it will improve the search results.
My site is mainly selling my own content, mainly visual designs such as brushes and shapes and patterns etc and as such from page to page of images, there is little change to the repeat terms used (brushes, shapes etc) - likewise in titles and keywords .. my site was ok in ranking for those keywords until the recent change
Now even torrent warez sites with my stuff are doing a lot better than my listings as well as many sites with only the vaguest relation to the search terms or sites that haven't changed for ages and with out of date info.
Anyway, re-working my pages to try and match the new approach but at the moment the site is totally off the radar
Funny how google devalues sites which are duplicate copy, but still values blogspot blogs which have obviously been autotranslated into english, have no regard for english grammar, but are still keyword rich, is it because google owns blogspot????
LinkMunki ;)
I have a site which took a hit and it is unique, well written, in depth, basically everything you state.
The problem is that NO ALGO in the universe can check the things you have stated are important.
So unless you have spent some of your shrinking profit on an army of site assessors, then this post is PR at its worst and contravenes everything you say is important for content - the irony.
Bottom line, you are messing with the algo to maximise your own profits. Dont treat us as stupid.
Thanks for taking this opportunity to discuss this, I feel fervently about this and I like learning about this subject.Web Design Company
And my last comment to this post is at http://www.howtomakemoneyonlines.org/how-to-make-money-online-blog/editorial/an-open-letter-to-google/
To summarize that post, enough is enough.
There is an excellent response to this blog post by Aaron Wall here: http://www.seobook.com/questioning-questions .
James Crowley
CTO, TechEye
Thanks for the information on the Panda update. However, I know some of our articles are a little shallow in content, but how can I easily find them and fix them when we have over 5,000 articles?
Apologies for the deletions, I was having issues, all sorted and won't repost after this...
This might be an anal example but either way a good example of how google still needs to tweak...
The following google search...
http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=movie+forum&aq=f&aqi=g4g-s1&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&cad=cbv
#1 is a Free online movies website which has multiple pop-up spam and exe downloadables (eeeek)
#2 is a relevant useful movie forum
Now as the search query is "movie forum"
Which should be number 1? and is the current #1 (free movie site) at all relevant to what has been searched for? No it isn't.
Your article does not address shopping carts, you know sites that sell things. Google seems to only care about information sites and totally ignores ranking carts. How about making a cart display a local phone number and local address to get ranked?
Thanks a lot for this information about the new algorithm Panda. I am happy about this news to eliminate low quality blogs and sites from search engine rankings.
For anyone interested in having your website evaluated using this criteria by a third-party, http://ranktheresults.com/ is now set up to do so.
Thanks to Panda I have closed my Adwords campaign and moved it over to Facebook. I am also investigating a short on GOOG so I can make some money off this mess.
Long tail keywords are the most spam I've ever seen in the history of Google. Almost all searches i do on 6 or more keywords go to redirect sites, .cc sites, .info and a ton of scrapers. I know this can't be the intent. Please look into this. Here is one example of thousands. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=hts&oq=&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS343US344&q=Linon+Simon+Black+Club+Chair
Thanks for all the feedback and advice
Durant - You are so correct - "I'd like to see Google put less weight on brand authority and more on page content."
Here Here
I don't have to be a big brand name in order to provide excellent content.
That is arrogant on Google's part.
"I don't have to be a big brand name in order to provide excellent content.
That is arrogant on Google's part."
I don't think it's arrogant; it's just naive to assume that "big brand" equals "quality," at least when it comes to information sites. Consider:
- Usatoday.com buys "travel tips" from Demand Media. Hearst is also outsourcing content for a couple of its newspapers to Demand Media. And I know a guy who was offered an editorial permatemp job at Nytimes.com for $15 an hour, no benefits. What does that say about quality and brand names?
- In my sector (travel), much of the content on name-brand editorial sites is recycled from guidebooks or, worse yet, user-generated. As a result, the content is often outdated, shallow, inaccurate, or all of the above.
- An even bigger problem (from a searcher's point of view) is that giving too much weight to "brand authority" or "domain authority" results in Google's being too forgiving of corporate-owned megasite that populate their sites with keyword-driven stubs. Until big-name sites get slapped for cluttering the Web with worthless pages, algorithms that try to assess quality will be of limited value.
I'd like to know why Google places so many torrent sites in its listings if these are the criteria. I'm sick of having my products pirated with Google as an accomplice.
Google, you might be too arrogant to be paying attention but I hope you recognize the ground swell of hatred building towards you. There is a tipping point.
Google has lost it's way with this panda ...they opened pandora's box on this one, or I should say opened pandas box as they want a utopian web where the rule the web world like monarchs and issue proclamations. "I want the web to look like an I Phone box and packaging" "I like everything shiny white today but tomorrow I like everything matte black" You can't measure the overall experience by just measuring words on a page and then issuing a proclamation to all netizens of google land that I want it shiny now but less shiny tomorrow.
The statement at the beginning of the article to '[deliver] the best possible user experience on your websites' encapsulates the solution to a massive SEO problem; most people just don't get that SEO should be about quality rather than merely trying to 'game' the various Search Engines.
Thanks for this article ... I'll ceratinly share with those wanting to know more about SEO.
Why Google penalize the whole site for a few low-quality content. Google is strong enough to weed out great articles from even the garbage. Some really cool and helpful articles on so called content farms are getting google slap without any fault.
Amit,
Unfortunately, you haven't provided any new information that hasn't been regurgitated over the past few years by Google. In fact, this very 'article' would be one that doesn't provide quality -- but I digress...
What I will say is that since it has become increasingly easier to rank crap, as is evidenced by many of the top spots now being held by spam/scraper websites in SERPS, you have leveled the playing field for junk sites to flourish.
It's frustrating that good quality can be deemed spam or worse by the arbiter Google. Though I understand their need for an automated algorithm, the difficulty in understanding the decisions and ramifications are often lost by many businesses. We deal with literally 1000's of businesses and trying to keep them abreast of Google changes and rankings is constantly the most difficult question to answer.
"I hope you recognize the ground swell of hatred building towards you. There is a tipping point."
Quoting X's comment, I agree with this, and I think the tipping point may almost have been reached.
Dear webmasters hurt by the latest changes:
Keep in mind that the people deciding this change are multi-millionaires. Bored multi-millionaires. So bored that they go on xxx day challenges, like sleeping in their yard for 30 days or how to type with a left hand for a month or how not to care about webmasters collateral damage for years. Now they are experimenting as part of their legacy before they join the rest and leave Google for a hot company.
Also, above all, know that Google is very data-centric, they look at results. Their financial results to be specific. The bitter truth is that they don't care about you, that's why they never provide any useful info or support. And it's not just in search, they'll ban your adsense, adwords, email and everything with it and not even tell why.
And this is why they let an experimental algorithm wreak havoc upon tens of thousands of small business to help Walmart and eHow, this is why they are not re-running Panda 10 weeks into this and this is why they didn't warn or provide any suggestions to anyone. That's Google in a nutshell. They think that making enemies by being arrogant and evil will never catch up to them. But as I said, the top guys are set for life so they don't care.
Guys if you are looking for helpful and informative information on tour, travel, hotels, resorts, cars, bikes, electronic gadgets, health, politics, social issues, education, biotechnology, current affairs etc. then visit my blog: http://kunwarkashif.blogspot.com/
***SUGGESTION FOR GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE***PLEASE FORWARD TO THE GOOGLE SEARCH QUALITY TEAM***PART 1 of 3***
Hi Matt Cutts and everyone at Google,
My name is Tonya. I just wanted to thank you very much for your very informative post about the changes that were made to your search engine.
I am a college student studying Website Design/Interactive Multi-Media to get my bachelor’s degree at the Art Institute. I have also been a Website Designer, Content Writer, and a Marketing Specialist since 2006. I have a few suggestions for Google’s search engine results that I wanted to pass along to you and your team at Google.
A few years ago in one my Information Technology classes at the University of Phoenix--my classmates and I had to create a user manual for virtual organizations. In our user manual, we talked about social media websites and other websites. I learned a very valuable lesson in our class and that was to give users a variety to select from.
For example, when you are reading a book or an eBook, do you like to go straight to the INDEX, the TABLE OF CONTENTS, or to the GLOSSARY to find what you are looking for? Everyone is different and that is why it is a great idea for one to offer all 3 options in a book or in an eBook in order to please everyone. I feel that this same principle should be carried on into website design as well as in how search engines display their search engine results to users.
One suggestion for Google’s search engine is this. I would love to see Google add more than 1 type of search engine results that would appear on Google’s Home Page for every search engine inquiry submitted and an exceptional way to do this is by creating a Java Script Tabbed Page that will be located on Google’s Home Page that will contain all of the search engine results organized by different categories.
For example, let's say that I do a search inquiry on Google for the keyword phrase “website design”. After I click on SEARCH, I will see paid ads that are being displayed at the main top and on the right hand side of Google’s search engine. I will also see a list of free organic search engine results that show up directly underneath the paid ads. I would like to see this remain the same as well as Google adding a Java Script Tabbed Page that will appear directly below the first top 10 organic search engine results.
I would also like to see Google call their organic search engine results something like “Google’s Top 10 Featured Search Engine Results” and the reason is because it is very apparent that websites that appear on Google’s 1st page of search engine results have successfully created their website with high quality content, links, and other ethical seo techniques. So why not reward these Top 10 Websites by calling them “Google’s Top 10 Featured Websites”? It would be so awesome for Google to do this.
Directly underneath “Google’s Top 10 Featured Websites” is exactly where I would like to see Google implement a Java Script Tabbed Page that will consist of 9 Tabbed Pages from left to right that will contain the following search engine inquiries for each of the 9 Tabbed Pages from left to right in the following order in a similar order as you will see described below:
• On the 1st tabbed page, Google + 1 search engine results would appear at the main top of the page and search engine results from other recommendation websites would appear below Google +1 search engine results. Users would also be able to define their search a step further on this page by entering their city, state, and/or zip code if they like.
• On the 2nd tabbed page, Google Local Business Map search engine results would appear at the main top of the page and search engine results from other maps would appear below Google Local Business Map search engine results. Users would also be able to define their search a step further on this page by entering their city, state, and/or zip code if they like.
(Please read PART 2 of 3 because my entire post would not post here. Thanks!)
Duplicate content is everywhere, you can't penalize people for sharing good information.
"Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?"
So then why was I told by Phineas Mhlanga back in August to put 2 336x280 ads and a 728x90 ad above the fold?
Phineas works for you as an "Adsense Consultant" working with bigger publishers to generate "long term revenue" for the site.
Any thoughts?
I want to support the google panda, according to me, it is to improve suitable search engine result page. Thank you
How does Google decide if a website is giving "medical" information?
The blog on my company's site has articles about alkaline water, water ionizers, water filtration, and related subjects. We are a health related site, but definitely not a medical advice site:
http://www.lifeionizers.com/blog/
We have disclaimers on the site stating that we do not provide medical advice, not intended to treat, cure, etc.
However, the discussion of alkaline water ionizers is a health subject. Because of this, my articles have medical terminology in them which is necessary in order to accurately describe the subject at hand.
There is a big difference between medical advice (e.g info about drugs) and health information (e.g the importance of good hydration.
I would be very interested to know how Panda distinguishes between medical-advice sites, and alternative health sites. These two types of sites are not the same!
The most pernicious part of this is that it gives absolutely no usable guidance on how to identify which pages on our sites could be causing our entire sites to be penalized.
I am staring at a site with over 5,000 pages. I deleted the forums, because forums posts often have spelling errors. I deleted the custom niche glossary we spent months creating, because glossary entries are not complete and comprehensive pages. I deleted about 700 articles that were good quality but were receiving only long-tail traffic because they might be mistaken for low-quality content.
This is idiotic. Google is being socially irresponsible and I am a moron for taking them seriously. The items on this list cannot be measured algorithmically -- they are simply misdirection to keep us from puzzling out what it is that Google really uses to rank web sites.
I am now ranked below completely irrelevant pages from major corporate sites -- pages that do not have the information for which the searches are looking. I am also ranked below pages which have nothing above the fold but dual AdSense 336x280 blocks. This update is a complete failure and Google lacks the courage to admit that.
Here is what's next for Google in 2012...
http://sammy-noorani.blogspot.com/2011/05/whats-next-for-google.html
As I expected, search engine is getting more humanize. Google is definitely on the way. And using content driven marketing strategy does help a lot which is I am using. To use high quality content to draw natural and genuine links, to get real readers, to position myself as an expert.
By following these 23 questions, we can generate even more quality articles. :)
As I expected, search engine is getting more humanize. Google is definitely on the way. And using content driven marketing strategy does help a lot which is I am using. To use high quality content to draw natural and genuine links, to get real readers, to position myself as an expert.
By following these 23 questions, we can generate even more quality articles. :)
I have very mixed feelings about this. ORIGINAL, QUALITY content is not what is being looked at. For 5 years strong I have used original, unique, quality content, specific to my niche, and just recently saw a drop in rankings to poor quality sites that contain duplicated content from other sites. Something else is up?
why my verification allways fail in my blog http://blog.umy.ac.id/lintasberita
Please somebody tell me ?? where i must take the meta tag ?
We are a leading Computer Software and Hardware reseller. We have over 120,000 products on our site and we do not write original content on the Product pages. As most resellers do, we copy the content from the Manufacuturer sites. As we are resellers and not selling our own product there is no need to write original content. If we take a product page there will be only 1 or 2 lines of original content and the Specs and Features are copied.
Our major portion of traffic is Direct traffic and the second largest traffic source is Search, Google been the main player. We use GA to measure site performance. As we were keen to increase the traffic we ran some AdWords campaigns and we had to bear a big loss. We used the partnumbers of products as the keywords as we were sure that if some one searched for a part number, the possibility of conversion was higher. Some how the reality was not the same and we stopped running the campaigns rather dissapointed. Then we started working on SEO. We have worked on it now for few months following the recomendations provided by Google. When we submitted Sitemaps we saw URLs in web index increasing and all of a sudded from early May we saw the URLs in web index going down. Is this the post-panda effects?? If its so we will never be able to rank better or list top on search results as we cannot create original content. Its not necessary for us to do the business and we are not copying the content from our competitors. We are really lost here and appreaciate if Google can help us on this. Thank you.
Hi Amit,
how about basing (at least part of) the site's authority on how many times people actually search for the website by name? You don't have to be trademarked to be a brand or popular.
I think that people looking for a website by name (rather than just keywords), speaks volumes of a store, blog, etc. that has built some name recognition.
Thanks.
It's too bad Google ranking isn't based on the following criteria:
1) I love to write and am good at it.
2) My site contains a good percentage of original material in a field in which I am competent.
3) I have a small bibliography on each post.
4) I label op-ed pieces as such.
5) I don't give a rat's ass about my google page rank.
Well I am a google girl. I love google, ever since the day many years ago someone said they foundLouis McNiece's poem "I am not yet born" on the first page of trusty google. I couldn't believe what I had been missing:) Yahoo hadn't even heard of Louis McNiece ! and ten years or more later I would have to do a check to see if they are in the loop.
Sure I would like all my pages in the top three places, which webmaster wouldn't but not all pages can be in the top three positions. Thats if you need to think about it. Sure it's a long way from perfect but then its called Google and nobody coz only nobody is perfect. Perhaps an algorythum can be perfect, and then it could teach a heck of a lot to us humans.
Where would we be without Google. we'd be stuck in the misinformation age !
Ooops now you see I think I am perfect and never preview my post, which by now I should know that I make mistakes. It was supposed to go. It's called Google, not nobody
- only nobody is perfect.
Anyway thats the gist of it.
Happy googling :)
I'd just like to add one more comment here, and that is well what did come up in the first ten pages of yahoo's search when I requested Louis McNiece's, poem I am not yet born?????
Boggles the mind. What kind of junk is this???
Things could be so much worse. Look on the bright side, thats my view.
There is also a great deal of called original trash on line. Maybe the days are numbered for making a fast buck by producing original content that sucks. Thats the other side of the coin. Lots of people are quick to stand up and congratulate themselves on their so called high quality original content, but there needs to more to decide whether its high quality original content or just self proclaimed high quality original content. I tend to agree with the idea that many writers would be better off staying at home and developing their soul instead of taking up the pen.
Just the other side of the coin folks :)
These things are complicated. It's not so simple as some of you guys make out. I have a site where the average person spends just 10 seconds.
Yet there is some of the best music, writers, artists and poets in the public domain as well as some of my own work.
I like it, but it doesn't mean everybody else does.
And judging by the statistics, Mr Average Joe doesn't. Or is the internet just too fascinating for him to actually stop and look around? Or was he looking for something else?
Anyway, its all very complicated and I think Google has a better grip on it than any of us here.
Ten years ago yahoo made using a search engine a joke, a frustrating exercise in futility for the most part, with totally unrelated web pages springing up as search results, and look where we are today. Yes copyright theft, people presenting others work as their own, is a problem..but on the other hand we come with nothing, we leave with nothing and in truth, everything belongs to God. As it is said in the Bhagavad Gita. You have no control over the fruits of your labour. You must just do your duty. And that's the end of my sermon :)
Oh and whatever happens, consider it a blessing, the universe is infinitely kind
And if you have had top rankings then be grateful, but dont always expect them, because the one constant of the universe is change and the other is evolution. You may have to move with the times and change. many of the top ranking learn english sites dont even have audio.How people are supposed to learn a language without being able to listen to it I dont know. But unless they change, they will eventually be dropped because that is the nature of progress.
Expecting google to give you top rankings because thats how you earn your living and how are you going to pay the mortgage now. Well sorry thats insane -
or perhaps the averageperson is not prepared to wait the 47 seconds or whatever it takes for the 1 percent of slowest sites to load.. Then it that case it is only the pateint who are rewarded. The point being that there are a lot of variables to consider and I dont know why people are slagging off google so much when its always been years ahead of the competition - literally.
Now I am going to sleep now. Goodnight :)
and if you want to switch to yahoo and bing your going to have the silent movies teaching languages for the next ten years and who knows what else.
Thats your business. move with the times or not.
In my case I sell rural and rustic properties in The Northwest of Spain, I publish my properties in twenty some other portals apart from my site. I have always used the same text in these portals as on my site. Would Google mark me down as a scrapper (I publish first on my site) or will it mark down the other sites?
Right now my site galicianrustic.com is on first page of Google for all related keywords both in English and in Spanish. I did my own SEO learning from scratch and I wouldn't like to lose all the hard work that I have put into my site
In your case I would assume that it is quite acceptable to have the same property for sale on umpteen property portals. Maybe google knows the answer to that one.
For my circumstances I do not think it would be appropriate said the elves handing out advice as if they were the experts :)
QUOTE FROM ARTICLE "•Does the article describe both sides of a story?"
Is Google now being the judge and jury on "fairness"? This seems to fly in the face of "Freedom of Speech". Why should someone have to present their opinion and then destruct it . . .is that value?
Great! http://www.BestStreams.org
Learning to think is about seeing both sides of an issue and learning to think - instead of being controlled by your small minded opinions may save humanity from its path of destruction.
Not being able to think is our problem and anything that encourages that must be good.
Surely I'll use all guidance.
I truly do believe thanks to this algo update people will tend to take more time when writing content and ensuring its perfect and have enough resources and what ever it links to is of high quality.
"a Mumbai based researcher for About.com"
What an amusing surprise Matt P. Monarch, to find what can only be reference to myself here, since I live in Mumbai and write the About.com India Travel website. Well, where else would I be living but India? And for over 5 years. So, you can hardly term me a "researcher". I've visited almost every state in India, and write every bit of content myself. Our high rankings in the search engines are deserved because we are well trained in regards to SEO and editorial standards, and we write unique content that we are experts on. But About.com is in the same boat as everyone else with regards to this matter.
I'm happy to see this sort of criteria being being applied. There's a lot of poor stuff out there. Some of it could be mine (tongue in cheek)!
There's a book about the insanity that can happen when extreme rationality tries to objectify "quality".
I recommend "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
In the end, the philosopher goes insane, but is able to recover, largely by recognizing, in part, that "quality" is unique to the expectations of each person.
hi :)
What about e-shops? How should we create high-quality content for hundreds or thousands of products, when they are quite similar in their nature? E.g. toners and cartridges for printers. They usually differ in symbol (when they become from one manufacturer), so there is usually the same description for the product. Man cannot think of unique content for each of thousands of similar products...
Not everyone is creating articles Google. Some people want to sell something. Would you like to listen to an hour presentation about a product or rather half a page to full page presentation with just the necessary information. Now Google is encouraging the creation of spam ( redundant information ) to combat spam. And IT WILL lose market share. When I want to buy a product - I don't want to read through 3 pages of information before I reach the buy button. Go directly after content farms - don't destroy the Internet. Now everyone has to write articles and create precisely looking websites just to rank. This will blow up in Google's face. More content is not better - especially when you are selling products.
And this is the executive summary. The real deal is 10 unique pages long and after that you can click on the buy button.
Common sense must become the over all motivating force behind everything not e commerce driven agendas.
We cannot drink polluted water,we cannot breathe on a planet that has no trees.
Economic forces have reduced everything to a commodity and both science and education in this age of ignorance have ignored the presence of the observer. :) totally removing it from the equation.
My experiences tell me we at near the close of a 26000 year cycle. There maybe bigger changes ahead besides Google's algorythums :)
I think its wise to keep an eye on the bigger picture.
This is great news. This is how it should be anyway. Tired of all the sneaky methods to try and trick google. If you can't post quality, you shouldn't be posting at all. BTW, I really like the idea of submitting content and "claiming it" with a time stamp so you receive credit for original submission.
I am somewhat concerned about the checking of spelling. What is regarded as correct - English English or American English? Also, I don't think it's good enough to say that if a site is based in the UK, spelling on it must adhere to English English rules. We run a site where people build their own adverts for holiday properties. Some of these people may be from the US, some from the UK and many are from other countries. In their minds they will be using correct English, but will Google see it as such?
Amit recommended moving "low quality" content to another domain. Okay. I am doing that.
But since some of that content has external links, traffic, and ad revenue, I included a 301 redirect. For example:
http://acepilots.com/bard/ws_word.html now redirects to
http://stephenesherman/bard/ws_word.html
Will that meet the goal (of moving low-quality content off my site), or will Google's algorithm still view that content as part of acepilots.com?
Regarding scraping, if a site publishes through Feedburner which is a Google company, couldn't it then indicate who the originator of the content is?
I have a very high quality website (psychics.co.uk) that is mainly taken from extracts from my books published with Barnes & Noble and article I have written for the Daily Mail.
People copy good content and I have found it near impossible to get these sites taken down. Sites with poor content - such as sites with long dull sales messages - do not get copied.
It strikes me that you will fare better with Panda if you only publish trash that nobody wants to steal. Publish quality material that everyone wants and you will pay the price.
Panda is clearly achieving the very opposite of what was intended.
Would if Google's competitive edge is threatened? conflict of interest?
You may wish to try a search for "panda update solutions" the top 18 or so listings are an identical crappy auto generated article on real crappy article submission sites.
Oh how ironic! or perhaps symbolic?
In some ways I actually think Panda was a good thing.
My website duhaime.org is nothing but lawyer-written articles on legal topics. Our legal dictionary is the best on the Internet. We have NO information harvesting happening on our website. And yet we got hit hard by Panda, losing 50% of our traffic. My SEO is at a loss as am I. If it is happening to me it must've happened to others. Google guys and gals, you're losing the babies with the bathwater and searchers are suffering and if my example means anything, they cannot possibly be getting referrals to the best sites.
So regarding duplicate content, My website www.balidreamtours.com provides accommodation to Bali, most of the content is duplicated because we are using the Hotels descriptions about there accommodation as we have contracts with the said hotel would we be penalised for this?
Regards Ray
One would think that Google, with it's infinite understanding of database mechanics could make copied page deliver a "vote" for the original article's page.
After all, isn't this what a link does and what PR is all about?
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the site that gets copied should be rewarded.
What would happen to scraper sites if they knew that their pages were improving the stature (and traffic) of the site from which they stole their content?
Google should not be judging "quality" as this is entirely subjective.
What is 'quality' to a college thesis writer would not be such to an 8th grade dropout, and vice versa.
Take Ana's comment that her search for "electronic circuits"produced only worthless results.
Given that the term is positioned at the top of the short tail, what does she expect in the way of content? Every kind of circuit in the world on one page?
The sites that deal with this well are composed of lists of different kinds of circuits and links to see them.
Sounds kind of natural to me.
She even complains about #6 6 - utwired.engr.utexas.edu/rgd1/ = I want to see "electronic circuits" not the theory!
What would you expect from a university webpage?
And #8 has their menu at the bottom of the page as well as offering a main list of Categories, Tools, Theory, and their own circuits.
Ana thinks this is 8 - free-electronic-circuits.com = ZERO usability, where is the menu?
Quality is truly in the eye of the beholder.
Google should only judge how the search term relates to the landing page's content.
Let the bounce rate determine 'quality".
Nice list shared Amit.
I'm looking at each point very carefully but will try to apply on all websites.
BTW, we, (webmaster/marketers) always expect these kind of guidelines from Google's side, thanks for sharing.
you can use www.statspy.org tool to view any websites visitor number.
then you can select which website is populated, and which is not.
I introduce this guideline for japanese with translation . Thanks for good article !
▼「Googleの考える「良いコンテンツ」とは？パンダ・アップデート対策｜WEB戦略戦術ラウンドナップ」
Wow! Really Google. How do you guys write this stuff with a straight face?
Have you actually looked at your search results lately?
Hope you fix this mess soon - even my mom knows something is wrong.
When I'm searching, I regularly go to Page 2 or 3 of the Google results now. Soon I'll be ignoring Page 1 altogether. I thought the day would never come but Bing beacons.
Absolute drivel.
Google has now downgraded all the original articles about Thailand I write for Associated Content (I've lived in Thailand for a decade and so am somewhat of an 'expert' on the country when it comes to what foreign travelers are looking for), but.....ALL the scrapers who are stealing my content are now indexing on Google's page 1.
Needless to say, I now use Yahoo for all my searches. Panda was an absolute joke.
You dont need quality site, you only need a qualitiy doorway generator, some backordered domains and different IPs. You need an evidence? Look at this:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22where+to+buy+interactive+fleshlight%22&hl=en
Duh!
I'm pretty much over being angry that Panda destroyed the site I've been working on for 12 hours a day for the past year and a half.
Now I'm just kinda frustrated that I have to spend those same 12 hours a day throwing up crappy scraper sites to stay in business. Because that seems to be what Panda likes.
I should know - I have about 50 of them and most of them are way up in the serps even though they are auto blogs with duplicate content and are not even moderated. The only thing they have going for them is an exact match domain name. I mean, they are complete crap. Really!
I would much rather spend the time working on my quality site - but.. whatever - I'll still make the same amount of money... But I'll be making it with sites that I wouldn't send my worst enemy to.
And, if you guys are reading these posts, you should go look at all the webmaster forums. Every time you have made a Algo change in the past - all the webmasters (black and grey hat included) have always said "Wow, google is so smart - now we have to figure out new ways to game them."
With Panda NO ONE is saying that. The people who gained traffic are keeping their mouths shut and hoping you don't fix this thing - and the people who lost traffic are scratching their heads, looking at the new SERPS and wondering what the hell is going on.
If the sole purpose of Panda was to make it so baffling that no one could game the Algo - then you did a smashing job - but if the intent was to deliver better search results... Eh, not so much!
Hope you guys don't track me down and deindex all my sites! I would love to get back to work writing well researched original content that is VERY useful to my visitors - but until you fix Panda... It's back to throwing up 5000 page auto-blogs for me.
If this leads to an objective assessment of the site contents, we can look forward as a quality-oriented and serious sorin manufacturers of equipment only.
With a thing should google but look again.
The search profile that google assigns an IP address will be collected and used by special company in my opinion. Such a customer is promised, would bring its website on the first page on google. After a few days, he is also on the first page if he has not turned off their search profile. After he turned off his search profile, he finds himself back on his old position. Sun dangles it in front of a customer only that he would be available on the first page in google.
It would be nice if you could such companies and put a stop to practices.
If this leads to an objective assessment of the site contents, we can look forward as a quality-oriented and serious sorin manufacturers of equipment only.
With a thing should google but look again.
The search profile that google assigns an IP address will be collected and used by special company in my opinion. Such a customer is promised, would bring its website on the first page on google. After a few days, he is also on the first page if he has not turned off their search profile. After he turned off his search profile, he finds himself back on his old position. Sun dangles it in front of a customer only that he would be available on the first page in google.
It would be nice if you could such companies and put a stop to practices.
Влияет ли навигация по странице на качественность сайта?
Some times i write an article at my website and i know some websites are copying this content they copy and they stands first in Google rankings but my site is down even i wrote the article and all other copied it...
What is a solution for this how will you check that who published this article first... or which site was the owner of the article or wrote the article.
Hi,
thank you for this helpful article.
I will write a blog-articel in german about the Panda-Update.
May I translate your text into german and let my readers download it as a PDF?
Thanx
People, Read between the lines!
From what Google has said thus far, here's my observation:
1. For now, you must forget SEO. Just focus on making your site. Think of it as writing a good book. Don't think of sales.
3. The PANDA is not yet complete. It's still experimental.
3. I believe the PANDA includes PEOPLE. People from Google look at sites, decide, then feed their 'thoughts' into PANDA. It's like an AI system under construction.
This is like the 'evolution' in the late 80's... Commodores, BBCs, Amstrads, IBMs, Sinclairs, Ataris... the list is huge. No one was sure which way to go... multiple standards... multiple rules... Then Big Brother Blue changed the stage!
So now is probably the wrong time to settle into one particular search equation. Google can't tell you right now because tomorrow they'd have to withdraw it.
Hi, I have website (my client site). Sometimes easy to get on the top 10 ranking in Google SE with targeted keyword (free blog, free blogging sites, free blogs) and the best ranking is yesterday there in 7th rank. According some Google Rank Checker. But my problem, it's also very quick to get down! Even to come out of the top 20. I am realized that I have serious competitor with that keywords. What this probably influenced the quality of my link building? Or there may be something else?
Thanks
Thanks for the thought provoking questions. I have said for sometime that common sense will carry the day, and so you've confirmed it for me.
I put together some practical how to thoughts of my own for consideration on my blog at http://www.texstarweb.com/blog/basic-google-principles-for-any-website/
Amit, I am indeed concerned with the changes our equestrian site www.equisport.pt which had a ranking of 5 last week, has now dropped to 4. Further just last week Google confirmed 22.700 pages indexed, today I find 19.600 pages are indexed. This is rather embarassing as to advertisers we follow the Google stats for indexed pages etc... Do you advise that we change to the Panda algorithm to recover our Google rank?
i have just heard about panda,what I learnt is that Panda promotes must famous/popular content leaving the unpopular/not so famous content behind.But this effects the quality.and how?Autheticity of the content is authorized into commercial streams.Like Wikipedia which is a most Famous unofficial bibble of whole world,but there is Britanica and many other Encyclopedias that are credible but not as famous as Wikipedia on internet.so the credibility is lost by popularizing.that hampers quality search.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That's the best thing I can say about these questions. What I find interesting is that Google can algorithmically distinguish "quality" content based on some highly subjective questions yet it can't determine who the original content originator is?
On the surface, this sounds great. Great content = good placement but what about when you have great content and you get booted out of the SERPS? What do I do then? Any guidance from Google on this situation?
I am curious as to how the big bad Google algo decides what a quality site on "hot latin women with big booties" is? How do you become an authority on such things in Google's eyes?
Duplicate content is a major issue both from a usability point of view and a webmasters point of view.
I regularly find things that I have written posted all over the web on other sites. Some give me credit for the work, some don't. Some put it through an article spinner so it's barely readable.
But it frustrates me even more when I'm searching for information. Often it's a situation where over 10% of the first 10 pages of Google are just copies of the same text. If you find something and decide it's not useful, you don't want ten other websites telling you exactly the same thing. Why can't they just put one of these in the search results and not all of them?
I'm very happy with this new algorithm than the old google algorithm
"it frustrates me even more when I'm searching for information. Often it's a situation where over 10% of the first 10 pages of Google are just copies of the same text."
On several occasions, I've seen nearly identical pages from TripAdvisor and VirtualTourist in the top 10 search results for a given keyphrase. Why? Because VirtualTourist is owned by the same company that owns TripAdvisor, and it syndicates content from its sister site--which means that, in effect, one site is acting as a collection of "doorway pages" for the other. The parent company gets a visit (or maybe two) and revenues either way. And because Google is giving so much weight to brand names these days (Amazon, TripAdvisor, etc.), the company seems to be immune from duplicate-content filters.
"The World need an original, not a copy one".
I think this new Panda is better than the previous one. Now, Bloggers who doing with all hearts has the places on Google page, rather than the spammy one. I'm Happy with this Panda, this is really good improvements made by Google.
Love you Panda :)
Interesting ... but how do you define things like spelling error? Do you take into account whether it's US English or British English. Given that the majority of people who live in the US have never left their country, how could I trust them to know that my spelling is correct. Also, "would you find it in a book?" This is so subjective since what I might consider book material, someone else would not.
Totally agree with all the other comments that are being aired.
I have a popular website that is dealing with cut throat competitors and have to watch my original content being scraped daily, either being rewritten to counteract my articles, or brazenly used word-for-word on scam directory sites that are specifically created for Adword revenue.
If the lawyers get wind of how bad this is becoming they will be asking everyone to take a class action out because of intellectual property loss? You never know : )
I'm concerned that presenting both sides of the story is a requirement by Google. There are occasions when the writer may truly believe and be able to defend in an article that there is only one correct side to a story. I'm also concerned about the shallowness analysis of an article as I often write introductory articles that are intended to be followed by more in depth writing if a customer desires such.
It's curious that there are obvious sources of external authority, which Google does not seem to make use of.
For example. I am a published author of 8 books, produced by major international publishers, with more books on the way. One of my books is a "Getting Published" book, which is the category leader in its market.
You'd think that Google would want to search Amazon for such 'expert authors', then award higher marks to the author's associated website(s). It seems to me this would be fairly easy to insert into the algorithm, but I've never heard of its being done.
My sites works better and my articles place top 5 in search result. Some sites copied my content..i filed to CDMA, but no action taken by him..Now google drop my all articles from page 1 to page 6 or 7. new articles are not index yet...pleased guide me. why google do this to me.. i got not much support from help forum.. i don't have any illlegal content or articles..Users prefer my articles.. please guide.. much desperate
Awesome post our site Vab Media went from a pr3 to a pr5 thanks Google.
start fuctional google algorithm code:
$send($bot,$url);
if($url=$google_whitelist){
do nothing;
}
else{
$scrape($url as $content);
if($content contains $adsense){
do nothing;
}else{
$ranking = $serppage2 + rand()
}
}
that's how google's money-making machine is working...
is it bad for your site when someone stills your blog content? i just started a site about google adsense and im scard someone is gonna copy my content n google will ban me
This is all just so sad - really the pit of my stomach is twisted.
Google needed to meet the adsense fiscal quota's so BAM scraping MFA sites dominate the results.
while small corporations who followed the advice of Google lose any financial investment they made delivering content.
what a mess - it's a crying shame - I can only hope the stock market listens to the webmasters - yes the people for whom google owes it's success - without them there would be no purpose for Google
it's just a reverse of biting the hand that feeds you.
I never wish bad on anyone - but I am coming close in this case - as I watch Googles stock prices rise - I can really see its all a manipulation for PROFIT not quality of search results
I agree that low-quality coupon sites remain indexed with Google AdSense. Many of my high-quality keyword sites were de indexed on WhyPark.
A few sites posted my original articles on their blog. Whereas they gave me credit, my original content is nowhere to be found in Google. I looked as far as page #50.
At one time, my article was ranked number #1. There is obviously a conflict of interest since eHow articles with Google AdSense can remain indexed.
In my opinion, high-quality is disguised as removing the competition. WhyPark uses Bing and Yahoo. Google needs to figure out how to resolve the coupon sites with outdated coupons and codes.
It's frustrating to search for coupons. You eventually give up looking. How do I get my keyword sites indexed again?
Google essentially eliminated my best sites on a platform where I disabled the rotating articles to create custom content.
I see the Panda algorithm finally allowing webmasters to focus on making great engaging content and not focusing on link building etc.
I think Google have made a massive improvement in focusing their algorithm on this so that there is better quality content and pages ranking highly and not those with the biggest link building budgets.
I see that this is Panda update and the general small alorithm updates that Google is performing is very healthy for creating higher quality search results for each search term. I particularly find interesting this artcile: http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2011/04/29/google-panda-algorithm-change-seo-affect/ where the author shows that its best to move away from black hat SEO techniques because Google algorithm is focusing on high quality content and not only junk backlinks like previously.
How is page rank of a site valued in this post panda era?
This is particularly a problem for websites like wikiHow and Wikipedia. We do our best to make our pages very high-quality but with the traffic that comes in it's not always entirely possible. That's a problem because wikiHow will suffer (and has been suffering) because of this.
This post is a bullshit..old crappy sites with thousands of backlinks still ranked better than quality sites. The winner on google search result dominated by crappy sites!! that's the fact!..I'm tired following the "smart" advice from google fellow when the algo itself still "stupid"
I hope that Google is working towards finding site that really to relate to content and not just keywords in the right places. I really want to focus on building my site with good, informative and original content in the future.
This algoritm is ver very bad. My site have 350k visitor/day. After Panda, change to 320k. But, ONLY REMOVE main page on google search. 1. rank to 7th page. Enginer of Google is bad.
aha, and what happens when someone else, e.g. a competitor scraped my websites content?
I think this article explains things quite nicely :)
http://www.visionefx.net/articles/google-baby.htm
Even it's the worst. It makes my two years hard work wasted, while the scrapper site that totally copies my contents looks superior. Why Google tolerate duplicate site when ignore quality with complete content supported by a Youtube video channel.
Gratulations! Before Panda in Germany websites with good content could be found.
After Panda websites with a lot of backlinks can be found much better.
so it is not a question of better content but better backlinks.
And writing in Germany is different from writing in the USA.
In my eyes it is now a chaos collection and not a better content result.
So google knows best and wants to be the industry standard. So glad it's not my preffered search engine thte pomposity of these people.
The day I start writing articles to please algorithm writers is the day I will give up writing and publishing my own ideas.
Amit, You are with Google for past 10 years, and it is now after Panda Cleanup, that you feel for helping the webmasters and bloggers with hints - clearly, the motivation is to attract manual labour.
If google is afraid of content spam, its worst fear that someone might decode its algorithm could vanish forever with the Panda update that makes its algorithm completely vulnerable to be decoded!
RE: content scrapers - study the new rel=author link tag to claim your content as yours.
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