Google SEO News and Discussion

Feb. 28, 2011 - PRLog -- I feel like for the longest time we grew accustomed to a falsified index. When Google started adsense it paved the way for spam in the form of mfa and content farms which I'm sure compiles a majority of the index. Ever since adsense the index has been jaded.

Now all of the sudden they decided, "hey we do search let's focus on search again" as stated by MC recently, and decide to devalue all of the spam we've been seeing for years in one giant swipe. I think for Google it's a big strike in taking their index back however seeing as these pages and the links within them made a majority of the index we're seeing a monumental shift in results. These devalued pages affect every site for whom's content they scraped.

http://www.batteryfast.com/gateway/squ-412.htm         gateway squ-412 battery

In my case I have really great content which as a not-so-sincere form of flattery has been scraped by thousands of websites. I had achieved pretty good rankings until this update thanks to the thousands of links that spam created.

The other day I lost 35% of my traffic all at once. Can't wait to see the full impact is once the change is international. I'm all for Google dealing with the scrapers and content farms, but I feel they fell asleep at the wheel. This change could have been done in bits and pieces or something that wasn't so drastic.

http://www.batteryfast.com/sony/vgp-bps2a.htm      sony vgp-bps2a battery

http://www.batteryfast.com/sony/vgp-bps2b.htm      sony vgp-bps2b battery


The path I chose and have always chosen for 10 years is Brett's old post about ranking in Google in 30 days or whatever it was. Great post I guess as long as your content didn't get scraped along the way.

These sites came to our attention for scraping our content and duplicating our titles. We contacted the owners and got to know a little more about their operation. All were from India with writers (non-medical writers) rewriting our content. We could verify this because our doctors were putting in some unique content that was based on their years of clinical experience. This too was "stolen".

Today, these sites are ranking higher than us with their scraped content, "stolen" pictures and Youtube videos within the content. None of the media is original.

So Google is now serving inferior foreign content to it's US readers

Hope somebody at Google is listening.


For whatever my 2 cents will buy me, those of you considering all kinds of on-site changes -- I think that's the worst possible reaction when it is not really clear yet as how this will settle. Slow down, breath.

A theme I'm seeing here based on what members have been posting is; scraped and blackhat content is in many instances gaining in SERP. Work from there and go backward. Obviously Google knows that is the stuff that they want to suppress. And if so, why would it be rising rather than falling?

For those who are in a panic have you considered that a major algorithm change of nature cannot sort itself out in days, weeks maybe in some instances, but more likely months.

I'm sure google does in-lab quality control testing of these types of program changes before releasing them in the wild. But, regardless of how thoroughly they may test it -- the acid test is in the wild.

I have no doubt MC and company are following this thread to gauge reactions as they are being observed and reported throughout this hysterical thread. I have a feeling they have developed a reasonably good (short term) patch to address the stuff they are trying to tackle. In order for them to know for sure if they have nailed something reasonably well they would hope to single out those sites. What better way to get feedback (cost-free) than allow those sites to float to the top and then put an ear to the ground here in webmaster world. That would help them analyze their changes for accuracy and effectiveness. If the consensus is worldwide webmasters having a panic attack then they're probably sitting around their cubicles chuckling (I would be).

Once they know that they have built an effective pattern parsing patch they will then probably flip another switch to then corral those sites and push them down in SERP's because they then know they have probably effectively identified them.

Making obsessive compulsive changes to counter this algorithm change is probably not a good idea at this time because you may then have to start chasing it back the in other direction after it settles. Rule of 70 can apply to almost everything in day to day activities. 30 percent of webmasters who know they have built their sites with users in mind will patiently ride out the storm and probably settle back on an even keel. 70 percent who have MFA sites strictly for the sake of income with little thought given to the end user will be chasing their tails and whaling about spilled milk.

And for Google staff reading this -- if my observations are wrong then you are failing miserably.

Either way, relax, slow down, smell the flowers.

Your results may vary, happy weekend everyone.

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