In a effort to clean up the over abundance of low quality content in its SERPs, Google implemented an algorithm update in late February that has some sites reeling from its effects.
As most everyone knows, Google often changes its algorithms by weeding the field but this latest update has virtually plowed under the rankings of many well-known sites, rendering their crop yield for the Google SERPs practically useless by almost 12% in many cases. The impact may only affect the U.S. at the moment but it is likely to go worldwide in the future.
Although Google states this latest “Farmer” update is in direct response to the often-criticized quality of its SERPs and their intent with this latest update is to yield a better crop of rankings for high-quality sites with original content and information, early results have some websites taking up the pitchfork in protest.
One of the biggest complaints for many sites that witnessed a drastic drop in ranking seems to be being identified as a content farm; especially since it appears Google’s recent update is targeting these sites as producing shallow and low quality content, even if they are not confirming this as one of their primary targets. Unfortunately, the stigma of the content farm label is a direct result of those sites that have not put in the effort to generate an outstanding content crop.
In response to the protests, Google has stated that if you have been negatively impacted by the Farmer (aka Panda) update, you simply need to improve the quality of your content to negate the effects. Once the low quality content has been removed and replaced with relevant content, Google will reward the effort and your rankings will begin to improve.
Despite this simple solution offered by Google, there is still considerable confusion as to why some sites saw their crops annihilated and others avoided the sweep entirely, as it is still easy to find plenty of low quality or completely irrelevant content showing up.
As a result, many are questioning exactly what Google deems to be low quality vs. high quality and how they determine which sites are really content farms that produce low quality spam crops. Many sites that have been hit the hardest by this latest update are still trying to figure out how they managed to fall in path of the destruction; and some are still trying to decide how to plant the right crop to avoid another pass of the Google plow.
While there are probably some sites that may have deserved being plowed under by this update, and are not likely to easily bounce back – if ever, there are others who are scrambling to identify the damage and find a solution to get back in the game. As is usually the case, there is no shortage of suggestions readily available in order to try and salvage what is left of a site that has been hit. While the debates are varied, most agree it will take time and diligence to recover and those who cannot adhere to Google’s guidelines will pay the price.
