Recently, Google has made a major change to their search engine algorithms to enhance their search quality. The changes that were made are very subtle, and many users likely won’t even notice them. But they are modifications that will get rid of those low quality sites with useless content, also known as “content farms.”
Google hasn’t released any information about what exactly they did to the search algorithms, but the change is expected to impact 11.8% of Google queries. The changes will help high quality websites by essentially rewarding them for their creative and original content – an arguably appropriate move.
“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on,” stated Google’s Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts in a recent Google blog post.
For now, Google is only launching this change in the United States. Over time, they will expand its launch, but first they’re looking to get feedback on the new algorithms. For those websites that this change will be affecting negatively, you can be sure there will be some angry website owners who feel their website is ranked too low, but it’s likely that, in most cases, Google will be correct in their rankings. This is Google’s effort to get rid of those content farms, or at least significantly decrease the number in their search results. These are important changes that needed to be made for Google to maintain their title as the number one search engine.