If you still don’t think Google is serious about eliminating content farms and useless content in general from the equation after my previous blog post, then this update should change your mind for good. Chris Knight (the CEO of EzineArticles.com, a site with decent content compared to others IMO) posted the following information on their official blog: “Last month, we served 57 million unique visitors. Next month, that number may be in half.”
What This Means
As previously mentioned, EzineArticles.com is actually a decent site with decent content compared to others. They have been around since 1999 and if such a website can lose 35% of its traffic just like that, then I’m sure you can imagine that things look grim for content farms and sites which don’t provide value in general (minisites and mass developed sites, for example).
I don’t want to waste your time by stating the obvious through a huge blog post, so as a conclusion, I’ll simply list some of the changes which have been or might be implemented on EzineArticles.com according to their blog post (if this doesn’t make it clear that even big players are taking Google’s recent changes seriously, nothing will):
1) Their rejection rate is expected to climb from about 40% to 60%
2) They will expect the articles to be exclusive to you as of this point and in the future, they’re thinking about only publishing articles that are exclusive to EzineArticles.com (in other words, you might not be allowed to publish an article there that has been published somewhere else)
3) They added a nofollow attribute to all links but have reverted back to dofollow links according to a recent update
4) Thousands of articles were removed on Friday and many more will be removed in the future
February 27th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
It just shows how powerful google is and how even with this update people and companies are being affected in a major that is one reason why you can not put all of your faith in google because stuff like this can and will happen.
February 27th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
You made a good point TeenDomainer! With all the changes google has been making with its algorithm, does anyone think this may benefit other search engines?
February 28th, 2011 at 6:16 am
@VexicoreMedia I expect the opposite. Google will gain more Market Share since it looks like Google will succeed in filtering tons of (duplicated content, useless websites, content farms) which should be a good thing for Google users/searchers.
March 1st, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Here I’m completely agree with Google’s new algorithm.Anywhere where you submitting info-less content all should be erased.You have to be relevant and more choosy about writing concern.Visitor wants fresh and info-rich article to read…
March 2nd, 2011 at 7:03 am
You have to look at it from the end-users point of view.
If you type in “gold plated combs” as a search term in a search engine and the results listed consist of 50% crappy duplicate content sites, then it reflects badly on the search engine in question and the user will consider looking elsewhere next time.
I think that the update will result in higher market share for google is it increases the quality of search results for the end user. The higher quality search results will increase Google’s reputation as the “go to” search engine in the mind of the end use.
March 4th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
@ Ian… I could not agree with you more. I think people sometimes forget that Google is a business. Like any business, it has to respond to what their customers are asking for.
March 14th, 2011 at 3:52 am
ohh..it shows that Google can do everything.I have also a platinum account of ezinearticles.
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