Google's move to cut junk search results has dramatic effect, but ...
The good news and the bad news.
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Today, Google launched a drive to cut down on junk search results (see the search giant's official blog on the topic here).
The company said changes to its algorithm, made last Wednesday New Zealand time, would affect around 12% of searches, and yield higher quality results.
The changes are designed to weed out copy-and-paste sites, designed only to attract Ad Words traffic, and other low-rent destinations.
Such sites often try to to game Google's top-secret algorithm by techniques such as mindlessly repeating keywords, or paying developing world workers to create links from (equally lame) external pages.
Many who're sick of such web pages clogging their search results - one commentator said "Google has become a jungle" - will welcome the changes, and indeed wish they affected far more than 12%.
The good news: a Wall Street Journal poll of search engine experts found Google's changes have had immediate and dramatic effect.
Well-known social-networking, retail and news sites have emerged as apparent winners, rising in Google's rankings, the Journal said today.
While a handful of "good sites" complained they had become collateral damage, LinkedIn, Facebook, national retailers, Time Inc and News Corp sites are among those to have received an immediate lift - as has Google's own YouTube.
At the same time, some sites famous for their conveyer-belt, lower quality content, have fallen.
The bad news: the changes only apply to the US - although Google says "we plan to roll it out elsewhere over time."
NBR staff
Mon, 28 Feb 2011
Mon, 28 Feb 2011
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Google's move to cut junk search results has dramatic effect, but ...
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