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Our previous post reviewed some recent search scandals that have, perhaps, tarnished Google’s reputation for rewarding relevance in search results. Two of these scandals involved controversial marketing techniques that effectively “game” Google’s search engine. And, in each cases, once the story broke, Google was quick to address the situation, dole out punishment, and update its famous algorithm to put an end to the practice.
Now it seems that Google is on the offensive in what Danny Sullivan, of Search Engine Land, is reported to have called “both a P.R. move and a move to improve relevancy.” In a widely reported development, the search giant is now taking aim at so-called “content farms” and “site scrapers.” The former are sites that create content tailored specifically to popular search queries, while the latter generate content by “scraping”, or copying it, from other sites. In both cases, the aim of the site managers is to increase traffic by technically meeting Google’s criteria for relevancy — a goal that will, in turn, potentially increase revenue from online advertisers whose rates are based on traffic statistics. These sites are essentially subverting Google’s definition of relevancy and thereby threatening the usefulness of its search results for users seeking truly relevant content rather than ad-supported spam. Google’s relevance as a provider of links depends on its ability to weed out the truly relevant from the crap. This is an ongoing battle that advances with regular tweaks to Google’s algorithm, but this latest offensive by Google is of a different magnitude: as Sullivan says, “Google changes its algorithm on a regular basis, but most changes are so subtle that few notice. This is different. Google says the change impacts 12% (11.8% is the unrounded figure) of its search results in the US , a far higher impact on results than most of its algorithm changes.”
In a related move, Google also recently released a browser extension that will allow users to “vote” on the relevancy of sites by blocking them from search results. The New York Times reports the following: “Last week, Google introduced an extension to its Chrome browser that people can use to block certain sites from appearing in search results, and said it would study which sites people block to figure out which ones bother users. On Thursday, Google said that it did not use this data to change the algorithm, but that the new algorithm caught 84 percent of the most-blocked Web sites.”
I, for one, have been frustrated many times by those ubiquitous eHow.com and answers.com pages clogging up my search results and wasting my time. Let’s hope this move reduces the noise in Google’s signal, however temporary the gains may be.
UPDATE: Search Engine Land and Wired.com are reporting a backlash against Google’s recent move as high-quality sites are mistakenly penalized by the changes to the algorithm. The noisiest complaint thus far has been from Cult of Mac, which had reportedly lost “one-third to one-half” of its traffic since the change. Google says it is constantly working to improve the accuracy of its results — and Cult of Mac is now reporting that its “relevance” has been restored.
More on the web:
Danny Sullivan, “Google Forecloses On Content Farms With ‘Farmer’ Algorithm Update,” SearchEngineLand.com (2/24/2011).
Claire Cain Miller, “Google Tweaks Algorithm to Push Down Low-Quality Sites,” The New York Times (2/25/2011).
—, “Seeking to Weed Out Drivel, Google Adjusts Search Engine,” The New York Times (2/25/2011).
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