How does Google label a web site a "content farm" and how can it be corrected?
Asked by
Dog (
25152
)
October 24th, 2011
Would it be because of bots that visit, even if they are banned on site?
It is because of the way a site is set up?
Most importantly, how can one convince Google that the site is NOT a content farm?
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
149 Answers
It’s not the visits by bots but the content brought from other websites and “pasted” as information.
“Copy – paste” from web searches by the members is not NEW content but “FARMED” from other sites.
Google is convinced because of the high percentage of the content from other sites on the web that is repeated.
What percentage are they seeking? Perhaps we should initiate a rule on not cutting and pasting here but linking instead with a hand written synopsis?
We need to get back onto the Google radar again ASAP!
In your opinion what is a good way to get out of the “farm” ranking?
I think it is because the site has nothing on it that wasn’t already on the web. An aggregator to no purpose other than to draw visitors.
Rewrite anything you quoted from other sources
@anartist Fluther is HUGE. I would not know where to begin on re-writing even if we could. :(
Can we just start fresh with a rule of no pasting?
Links and copying from other sites are still, by Google standards, shallow and low quality information.
:(
In other words, where we once ranked high up on Google, because we now allow questions that are easily answered by a Google search, we have reduced ourselves to “junk” status.
So what are the different ratings, like content farm, or blog or something like that?
This sucks.
@Dog
Google changed the rules more than Fluther changed the content or format.
Shouldn’t this be in “Meta”?
It seems to me that, in order to keep Fluther free and paying for itself we need to enact some changes.
Before we were bolstered up by the unique content of our resident experts in their own words. Users like @Shilolo and others who would take the time to write about their fields of expertise.
Perhaps we should consider changing our content to meet these new rules. We (The Users) are Fluther. It is up to us to keep it afloat right?
Moving to Meta
Ouch, having to mod yourself
We definitely need to revise some rules
Couldn’t agree more, @Dog. So, we’re getting a lower ranking because of all our Googleable, intellectually unstimulating questions? Or because of our quick and easy answers? Or both?
Oh mygod FLUTHER is a “content farm”?????????????????????????
because of all those links—not what people write
I can’t believe that the percentage of creative, considered answers, to say nothing of the humorous asides, would have helped us. Maybe cutting out the humor in serious Qs changed our percentage.
This makes no sense to me. Most of what we write, we write ourselves. It’s not cut and paste. And it seems to me that the links are something Google used to measure as a way to see how significant a site was.
Someone needs to talk to Google about this.
Links and copying from other sites are still, by Google standards, shallow and low quality information. I can hardly remember any site, less a stand-alone blog, that doesn’t link to another source, or commerce site. Links are the lifeblood of the Internet. To penalize for that is like penalizing a city because it has too many freeways running to it, and through it.
How do they even know there is copying?
This is so unfortunate – I wonder what proportion of the existing links are to things like google images in jest, or to self-posted photos or videos in order to facilitate asking a question, rather than answering it. As @anartist said, so many of the responses are original.
I vote for bringing back Google it. as an acceptable answer.
Yeah, it’s not the nicest thing. But, come in!
Being polite is killing our rankings.
Wait a minute. What if Google is punishing us
for not referring nubie users to use Google’s search engine?
That would be so wrong—but also kind of funny.
@Nimis that is a funny thought. And I would also have no problem asking to re-instate the Google It rule if it will get us our funding back.
@wundayatta There are sites like Copyscape that measure original content.
Does anyone else have any suggestions on how we can get our rating back?
Links on your site to other sites, and links on other sites to your site, are not content farming. Having content on your site linked to from other sites is a good way to get your score increased on Google (though Google has ways of determining if you’re setting up sites that link back and forth to each other in order to increase your score unfairly).
Content farming is having images and videos embedded on pages on your site that are hosted on other sites. Like this:
<IMG SRC=“escape.gif” ALT=“NSFW” />
And it looks like Fluther already forbids people from doing this, since my HTML tag just shows up as text in my answer.
The image appears on your page, but it’s actually hosted on another site. Google considers that cheating the system (even though it’s often done legitimately: paying a photo hosting service to host the images of your site so that you don’t use up your site’s bandwidth allocation per your hosting service). It’s very common thing to do with videos.
I don’t see where you’re doing that anywhere on Fluther, so I don’t see how Google considers Fluther to be content farming.
Hmm, so maybe it is a mistake?
I am researching now about the Google “Farmer” algorithm.
Apparently it seeks and labels sites that copy content from other sites, or spams keywords, or has a high number of link backs that were falsely generated.
Legitimate victims like Fluther have been: Cult of Mac, onedayonejob.com; and Complete Review. Once the algorithm went into effect all these sites saw the same sharp drop in traffic that we have after being falsely labeled as “Content Farms”
Interestingly enough, Cult of Mac’s standing was later reportedly restored. HOW!!??? Does anyone know anyone over there? How do we get off the blacklist here!?
::: Emailed the webmaster at CultOfMac.com- I am hoping they will be kind enough to tell us how they were able to clear their name and site rankings:::::
Not much you can do. Appeal to the Google mods, I s’pose, and hope they agree with you…
But you know how it is when you think you’re site/comment/whatever is perfectly legitimate, and a mod doesn’t agree… :-p
Apparently Answerbag.com was labeled a content farm and meets the definition according to Google.
Answers.yahoo.com is NOT a content farm.
What would be the difference- is it that one is more social? Was putting in social our downfall?
Joel sold Answerbag to Demand Media. Demand Media turned it into a content farm, and all their users defected to sites like Fluther :-p
I just tweeted this message:
“New algorithms have recategorized our site as a “content farm.” We certainly are not! Any way to fix this? Traffic really down!”
to these guys:
http://twitter.com/#!/mattcutts
http://twitter.com/#!/theamitsinghal
the guys at Google who co-authored this Google blog entry on the new algorithms. I don’t have any idea if it will do any good but Twitter was the only way I could find to contact them or possibly get their attention.
I don’t know if there is any way to change the content of the site that would fix the issue. I’ll let everyone know if hear anything or get any info. I tried to post a question on a forum that seemed a good place to get info but I only just registered and couldn’t start a new thread so I decided to go the Twitter route.
Edit: This wikipedia on content farms mentions the changes google made to kind of weed them out, but not the exact process they use.
@lillycoyote You rock!
I am hoping to figure out exactly where we fell into “content farm” territory. I cannot speak for @andrew or @ben but I am certain that, if possible, they will do what it takes to restore our Google rankings and revenue to continue operations.
In the meantime suggest away folks.
My worry now, after reading up on the algorithm, is that the inclusion of the “Social” section took us out of serious Q & A range. Again though, not sure. Still researching.
What is obvious, by the response to this question, is that we are a unique site and the members care.
@Dog also, on the forum I mentioned, though I couldn’t start a new thread, there I was able to post a reply to someone whose traffic was down 40–50% and had asked, in the Google forum, if it had happened to anyone else. I mentioned the problem here and that it was about the Google changes and the content farm business and wondered if he was having the same problem. I keep you posted if anything comes of that too.
I’m still researching too. :-) Let us know what you come up with.
@phaedryx Yes, now I feel like kind of an idiot for pestering those poor google people on twitter. This is old news and we are not alone.
@phaedryx @lillycoyote It would be beneficial to post on that forum in that it may provide insight to Google as to things that clearly need improvement within the algorithm. However, the top post by the person who appears to be the creator of the forum clarifies that there will be no manual exceptions to the algorithm made according to posts on the forum. Because one of the aforementioned websites successfully had its previous ranking restored, there must be a way to do so. I think our best bet would be to directly contact those who are knowledgeable on the algorithm (as @lillycoyote has already started to do) and see if it is at all possible to have the rank manually changed, or at the very least, get ideas on what is causing our ranking and on how we could potentially change it.
I wonder whether the abundance of links on our site is somehow involved with the whole ordeal. Even if there has always been these many links, I wonder if the algorithm change somehow involves this. This page, as I am looking at it, has 60 or so links to other pages on this same site. (The @username things are also links, along with everything at the top and bottom and at the side). There are about ten other links to sites other than Fluther.
^^ Also, our entire General, Social, and Meta pages are 100% pure links. My intuition tells me that a site with pages like this do not appear in the eyes of a search engine to be a quality site.
Around Feb 20 is when google made the change to their algorithm. Here is a chart of what that did to traffic. Where that hurts is that big drop was people coming from Google that are not registered so they see ads. Maybe it is time to include ads for logged in users too.
On the flip side, ask.metafilter saw a 5% increase.
My hunch is that the Social section doesn’t really help at all. It kinda waters everything down so while you might might have great info in General that should be indexed highly you have fart jokes and political crap in Social that makes the entire site look like one of the millions of other forums out there. Maybe Social should be moved to another domain name? It could still all be tied together but google would index the sites separately.
Thanks for bring all this up—Google’s change has been a real bummer. Andrew and I worked on this a few months ago, but haven’t made much progress.
From what I’ve heard, certain “bad” content can bring down the weight of an entire site. It’s easy for us to deindex questions, so google doesn’t see them. The trick is figuring out the bad questions (and not removing the ones that have traffic). For example, we could try deindexing all of social, but that may just make the traffic go down further.
We’re open to ideas… and I’m optimistic that it will turn around over time.
Hi @ben!
I have been reading all evening on this issue and would agree with your idea of deindexing all of social. Also, apparently if non-members see an ad on each page that can cause trouble:
Google Response on a forum:
“If we take this a couple steps further….. all content that is added is 1:1 with ads. Lots of content is added, always with an ad. Content is never deleted.”
Also should we consider deindexing questions over 2 years old?
“You are an IT website. Should you still have discussions about the merits of Windows95 or something equally stupid and out of date? What do you do with those old pages?
Content Farms, just like crappy ecommerce sites will often leave the old material hanging around. Not good for the web. Rework the old pages or just delete them. This is especially true with an ongoing discussion….. let’s say a rumour discussion regarding Windows27 to be released in 2041. Do you need a separate article for each rumour that is produced? How about combining all the rumours into a single running article and when Windows27 is finally released get rid of the rumour page because it is no longer valid.”
Quotes are from this thread a ways down.
From the thread Dog linked to I found this the most interesting part.
“Stop and think for a moment. Your ad links are follow. Your editorial links are nofollow. As far as Google is concerned the only outbound links from your site are connected to ads.”
Maybe they have a point. I know that nofollow is used so spammers don’t get pagerank for the link. But spam is usually gone in a few minutes here so I don’t see the need for it. It might not hurt to remove nofollow from links.
I just checked and ask.mefi does not add rel=nofollow to outbound links. They got a boost when google changed things up.
^^^ That could be HUGELY helpful here!!!
@ben- can you guys fix that so our links go out? (Just let us mods kick-butt on the spammers ;))
Also- Near duplicate questions as in “Does he like me?” should be in social always and not indexed. Such indexed duplications are a red flag for content farm. (Strong suggestion found on links provided by @lillycoyote)
Okay- This is very excellent news!
If we make the changes suggested by @ben and @johnpowell perhaps we can get Google to look at us again!
“Owners of legit sites that have been hammered by Farmer Update should assess their historical practices, strengths and weaknesses and see if there’s anything in their profiles that could be deemed against Google’s webmaster guidelines, AudetteMedia’s Audette suggested. Then, they should file a re-inclusion request with Google” Source
Here is the Google Page to apply for re-inclusion.
Nice job, guys.
Probably the most productive question from Meta yet.
PS Hi, Ben! Pass along a Hey! to Andrew too? Miss you guys around here.
@Dog
Also- Near duplicate questions as in “Does he like me?” should be in social always and not indexed. Such indexed duplications are a red flag for content farm.
If a change like that is going to be implemented, that is going to require help from the community. I would suggest that something like the above be added to the flagging options menu. As in, “Flag this, because it… is a near duplicate and should be moved to Social.” Just like any of the other problem questions and comments, the mods need an alert from fluther users.
So, would deindexing Social mean that we could no longer use the Fluther search engine to find questions that had been placed in Social? I don’t really know indexing works…
@lillycoyote There’s always an option to flag as “other” and then jellies can write in their own reasoning.
The more I read, and compare to other sites such as ours that survived and didn’t, the more convinced I am that this might be our best strategy:
1. Remove the “rel=nofollow” to outbound links.
2. De-index “Social” and any question moved to social by mods.
3. Apply for re-inclusion with Google
IF we are denied then I would also de-index questions that are over 2 years old and again apply for re-inclusion.
What do you think @ben? If I can help in any way please let me know.
That all sounds good @Dog ! Many thanks and kudos to you for working on this so diligently.
I think there is a valid place here for “Does he like me?” questions but if they can be in Social and not be indexed that would be great. Obviously, Social should not be the default.
And “here”::http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/everything-about-google-panda-update/ is a link to an article about Panda I just sent Dog and Ben. Probably old info for some now.
Great suggestions, everyone.
I think it’s worth de-indexing all Social and NSFW questions and then applying for re-inclusion and seeing if we fair better. It’s possible that we’ll lose traffic overall because we won’t get any traffic to these pages, but I think it’s a smart gamble.
I’m still nervous about rel=nofollow… I think it will bring a huge wave of new spammers, and I’m not convinced it will make a difference. I’m gonna see if I can learn more about that.
I’m hoping to implement these changes over the weekend.
Other background info:
– We’re not out of the google index. We’re just getting less traffic (about 65% less) than we were before. We’re now ranked 7,500 instead of 2,500 in terms of sites in the US according to quantcast.
- I posted on google forums to appeal/adjust a few weeks after this happened (along with thousands of other people), but at the time got no useful info.
@ben we need to institute a 3 day wait before an account gets verified, and have someone check the name. If it’s even a bit suspicious the. Fire off an email from a spam receiving account, the spammer won’t reply, or you’ll get lots of spam, random letters and numbers keep getting through.
Maybe even put accounts On watch, so before one of their answers or questions is posted we look at it, and save the time of having to mod it and the bad image.
@XOIIO Or maybe we only remove the rel=nofollow for users with >100 lurve?
“Or maybe we only remove the rel=nofollow for users with >100 lurve?”
That would be AWESOME! It would deter spammers and still allow our links out! :D
I am so excited! I bet it works! I bet we go back up to where we were before in the rankings!
Can someone tell me what “rel=nofollow” means?
@janbb According to what I gather, that command is added automatically added to any link we all post. It does not allow the link to be followed (recognized by Google) which is the reason spammers spam.
The problem is that having “NoFollow” on all the site user links means that the only links going out are for advertising only- which makes us look like we are only looking for ad revenue, and not a site of substance.
Once we allow users with over 100 Lurve to have the links without the “nofollow” then we will show to Google Bots that we are about much more than just trying to sell ads. :)
Makes sense to me; might even want to up it to 150 or 200 to be sure then. Thanks!
@janbb – follow and nofollow are parameters in HTML tags that tell search bots whether to follow a link when building an index of all pages on a site. Usually, you want the bots to follow all the links (except links to ads) to index every page on your site. If you have a sub-domain for adult content, you might not want your main site to link into that sub-domain…it depends on your priorities: do you want a small percentage of people to find all your content on a search? Or do you want all people to find some of your content on a search?
A photo sharing site I used to use had a similar problem. They put adult images on the same domain (restricting user access by age verification of their ID), and their whole site got blacklisted by a number of search engines as an “adult” site. The owner of the site eventually gave it up as a bad trip, took his web server, and went home….
@Dog @ben So maybe you guys could add on a couple new mods that only had the ability to mod spam, no off-topic or unhelpful or writing standards or flame-bait, just blatant spam? Sort of a semi-mod?
I’ll gladly, GLADLY be a spam mod
As I suggested in the other answer about Fluther’s problems of late, make everybody a spam mod…
If more than X people flag a post as spam, mute it automatically and then alert a mod.
However, a mod needs to review such muted posts and be able to un-mute it because this feature has the potential for people to use it to censor people they disagree with.
I haave a third monitor now so I can waste time multitask better XD
Can someone please explain what “content farm” means and why it’s bad?
@Jeruba Basically a site hat only copies information or links to it.
I wonder If someone could write a program or script or something that would automatically de-index any pages that have not been viewed in a given period of time, such as three months. Having a ton of pages with no page views definitely hurts our Google ranking.
@dog the cretins on answers.yahoo don’t know how to google.
their own illiterate comments are enough.
@PhiNotPi wrote “I wonder If someone could write a program or script or something that would automatically de-index any pages that have not been viewed in a given period of time, such as three months. Having a ton of pages with no page views definitely hurts our Google ranking.”
Is that possible? If so it is amazingly brilliant in nature!
What is this indexing? How can you decide what to index and what not to, and who do these indices appear to and what is the significance of them?
We have a lot of old content that is actually useful, I think. They contain people’s stories and those never go out of style, so-to-speak. I think there are social questions that are fluff, and those don’t need to be indexed, but I also think there are social questions that contain important or useful information about people’s experiences with specific topics that you don’t want to lose.
Maybe I’m just prejudiced, but when I write questions, most of them are about getting people’s stories with relation to a specific topic. I think they are worth keeping around—many of them, anyway. Often they are topics that do not generally appear in other places, I think. I suppose one could run a test, and see if a certain set of questions generate more hits or not.
@wundayatta From what I can tell, de-indexing means that we change a web page to tell the Google web crawler not to visit it. This removes the webpage from the eyes of Google, which can can change, and hopefully improve, our PageRank. The webpage still exists, though, and would still be accessible to people, just not Google.
Try getting listed in DMOZ almost better than google
I love this thread.
We are in the process of adding some new mods, too. :)
Oh ok, Doggie, you can come over and hump my leg again.
@janbb Well, since I am a girl doggie I would prefer a treat. Got any bacon?
I’m so proud of you all. These are the kind of questions that make this place awesome.
Some things on here might prove useful although it is a little out of date….oooh am I content farming???? http://selfpromotion.com/
For you Doggie, bacon any time!
So to resume the discussion, do you think we should not be including links in our answers even when they are germaine?
Love the name of one of those Google developers who worked on the “content farm” algorithm
—Matt Cutts. arrgghh.
@anartist And the algorithm is called Google Panda because the last name of the creator of it is “Panda.”
OMG…this was an incredible read guys.
@ben JP and I were talking and he speculated that it might also be because our site gets ‘scraped’ so often. A lot of our content does end up in other places on the web because of it, through no fault of our own. What if we disabled the RSS feed? Would that cut down on the scraping?
@augustlan not necessarily, anything you can see with a browser can be scraped. I’ve scraped fluther a couple of times (didn’t post it anywhere) without using the RSS feed. It’s pretty easy to do.
@Dutchess_III – Taking content off of one site and posting it on your site, be it photos, videos, or written articles.
Why is that bad? That’s what makes the internet world go round…
@Dutchess_III Part of the reason you get labeled a content farm is that the stuff on your site is found in multiple other places on the web. So, it could appear (to Google) that we are the ones copying content, from other sites. In fact, though, it’s the other way around. Other sites post our stuff.
@augustlan I was mentioning this to @Dog the other day, wondering the same thing, whether or not identical content found at multiple URLs might be part of the problem and some of it it Fluther’s doing, not that it’s bad, who knew? But I was wondering about Federated Fluther and what the status of that is and even if that has been shut down or has been discontinued, if there are traces of duplicate content lingering all over the web, at least on the sites that participated in Federated Fluther, if Federated could be causing some of the problems. Also the Fluther’s Twitter feed and the question of the day on Facebook? Could those be causing problems?
@phaedryx :: You are right that it is easy to do it. But I bet a lot of the sites that do it are just grabbing the RSS feed. I was bored and was curious how long it would take to do it. It took under 3 minutes with Magpie. From there I could just style it and toss on some ads.
@Dog yes, i still have a tab for “federated”—a ploy for expansion BenDrewIm et cie abandoned when they got twittered?
So…is there a fix in sight?
Can we as individuals boycott Google, and urge our friends to do the same, explaining how their “farming algorthim” is punishing some sites, such as Fluther, unjustly?
Perhaps the Fluther administration could even go so far as to put up a little widget at the top of the page to the effect of “Boycott Google” where it links to an explanation…
What do y’all think?
@HungryGuy Interesting idea, but I don’t see how it would work. For a boycott, you’d need to significantly affect Google; so much so that they’d be motivated to change.
1) How would google know they are being boycotted? Sure you can put something at the top of the site, but would Google notice something measurable?
2) Google measures their users in the hundreds of millions. Fluther is a great site, but it isn’t that popular.
@phaedryx – You can never tell how a grass-roots effort will go. It’s likely that other innocent sites are suffering as well. Maybe if Fluther joins forces with those other sites, Google will notice as more and more victims link to that “Boycot Google” widget….
@HungryGuy Boycott Google? I think you may be seriously underestimating how ingrained Google is into some of our lives. My emails, texts, voicemails, phone calls, instant messages are all in Google. My bookmarks are in Google. My pictures and music are in Google. My ability to find things out for school on any level is through Google. I get my directions to places through Google. My phone is a Google phone. Boycotting Google for me would a drastic lifestyle change implemented over a 6 month period. I think this new algorithm is problematic, and I feel for Fluther, and I think something should be done about it, but an all out boycott is a seriously drastic move over a relatively small problem.
Heck, our email domain is IN Google. All of our mod email work is done through GMail.
I’m going to put “Boycott Google” under the category “will work if possible, but isn’t.” It will be a lot easier to fix the problem by working with Google rather than against it. Once we launch a boycott, there is no going back, no “I’m sorry about the boycott, Google, but can you please help us and our site?” We can only boycott if we know we can win, which we (to be brutally honest) can’t.
I am eager to know how it is going. I have noticed a reduction in (spam) users signing up. The daily list is shorter by about ⅓. I know this means that Ben has done as he said he would.
We are still getting quality users in the mix arriving. Granted it is not as many as in the pre-farm days but we are NOT dead in the water. :D
I am sure Ben will give us an update when there is something to say. I have no idea how long it takes for Google to re-evaluate our site and remove the “farm” label, but I feel rather confident that we will indeed regain our rightful status.
what if every single one of us submitted the site to google for review? [and to dmoz while we’re at it]
Maybe somehow Occupy Google?
send them cute little google drawings with fluthers on them [that they take from viewers to use on their site occasionally]?
@johnpowell but before social—fart jokes and other rude repartee were woven into the serious questions [which I liked and miss—it was so no-holds-barred but with serious intent] And there were dumb Qs then about farts and such and they either got played with or ignored.
I’m not sure why, but I think the split hurt. I remember fascinating discussions about contemporary art or linguistics or whatever that also had the repartee, just like you’d find at a pub patronized by university profs and students.
@anartist Yeah, I’ve seen the quality of questions degrade a lot with new users, it seems like we are getting traffic from yahoo, and other such places.
@anartist Christ, you almost gave me an aneurism, I thought someone was posting spam, and I mean currently, I didn’t really know about the poop question.
For a few of these I googled fluther + topic and got lots of results.
IF FLUTHER IS INCLUDED IN A GOOGLE KEYWORD SEARCH WITH A TOPIC BY MANY PEOPLE OVER A PERIOD OF TIME, GOOGLE WILL NOTICE
Occupy Google!
@anartist I can make a batch script to search google constantly in a sense, and I might be able to make it search random topics XD
somebody locate @judochop’s appendicitis, and online treatment from @shilolo—is there a doctor in the house?
@anartist The split to social and general was well before Osama was killed, so I don’t know why that question is included. Or the foreign language one.
@Aethelflaed I know that. not all my examples were pre-social. The first batch came off my list of bookmarked “fluther faves” If you really want a clearer picture of fluther before social—pinpoint the date ‘social’ was added and search “all your answers” for questions that interested you before that date.
I am only one person. I can only do so much. Give it a try yourself.
@anartist No, I know how to search for stuff pre-social. What I was looking for was evidence of this pre-social atmosphere in which there was repartee about art and linguistics and the like that you’d find in bars frequented by students and professors that somehow differs from the atmosphere today. I wasn’t there, but you obviously were, so I figured, because you remember them being such great threads, you had tons of really great links in which people were debating these things and making these jokes.
I just wanted to let everyone know that we’ve made some changes and have resubmitted the site to Google for review. Keep your fingers crossed!
Can I cross my eyes and fingers and toes and…?
Thanks for being our Community Manager.
Thanks for being such a great community!
It is all going to change back! I KNOW it is! I can FEEL IT!
When do we expect to find out?
@wundayatta From what I understand, it can take up to three months. :/
How will we know if we’re back in?
As soon as I hear anything definitive, I’ll post here. Or maybe make a new celebratory thread! Or both. ;)
Yesss!!!! A potential PARTY!
So. Google says we were never penalized for being a content farm. Apparently, our ranking changed for some other reason. Back to the drawing board! Damn it.
No cake? No balloons? No party favors then?
(dang – the Penguin wanted a party.)
Did they state why we were penalized, then?
Nope. We think it may have to do with not getting linked to by media sites.
So if we get quoted by New York Times or Fox News a lot we would have our status changed ? ? ?
Are we sure they are telling the truth? Who is the person who told us? Are they someone who pays attention to details? I could see them easily making a mistake. Or for that matter, just lying to get us off their case, since we’re such a small website.
Will they tell us why our ranking changed?
Ya’ know, this is all very odd-sounding to me. Supposedly, a web site’s ranking was a combination of how many other sites linked to it and how often people clicked on that site’s link in search results. That a search engine would adjust a site’s ranking based on their opinion on how “valuable” that site is strikes me as rather fishy.
And we used to get a ton of traffic through Google! I really don’t understand it at all.
Right! And it was self-moderating; the quality of a given site was determined by the number of other sites that linked to it. A high quality site will have many other sites linking to it, whereas a low quality site (or “content farm”) will have very few other sites linking to it.
There was no need for anyone to decide what is, and isn’t, a “quality” site and tinker with the the rankings.
This is all beginning to smell like a big corporation (Google) favoriting sites on their search results for their own vested interest.
This is yet another reason why corporate executives will be the first up against the wall and shot when the revolution comes.
BullPucky!
Our ratings dropped the day they put in that algorithm!
Might I add how their algorithm FAILED? Searching on Google now brings up a whole new crop of useless sites to sell us stuff. I wonder if Google is not like politics… we need to pay them for the rankings we have rightfully earned.
I think you’re onto something; I think we don’t generate any revenue for them.
I find that the whole thing STINKS.
When searching for INFORMATION on a topic sites like ours, that do not charge people, should be at the TOP of the rankings.
I want to know WHY we would be penalized! (And yes, I am taking it personally)
@Dog – I agree! It’s total “BullPucky!” But there’s not much we can do about their algorithm.
That said, other sites must have noticed the same thing occurring to them on the day Google put in that algorithm. So maybe we can identify those other sites and set up a cooperative effort to shame Google into removing that algorithm. Not exactly boycott Google, but some sort of banner that shouts, “Google’s content farm algorithm is unfairly penalizing social networking and other high quality sites that people enjoy using.” Perhaps something in the spirit of the SOPA/PIPA protest on the days prior to the blackout.
Like I said above, it used to be that the quality of a site (and, thus, its ranking on search results) was determined by how many other sites linked to a given site, and how many people clicked on the link to a site from the search results. There was no need for Google to change that.
That’s why I think it has more to do with favoriting sites on their search results that align with Google’s vested interest than in ridding their search results of “content farms” and other “low quality” sites.
And if that’s true, the solution is to become a paid advertiser on Google :-/
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