Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lately you’ve probably seen & heard the bashing Google has been getting regarding it’s results & particularly the quality of the content it ranks highly. Basically people were creating crappy content on the cheap, getting backlinks to it & getting top rankings (Including major corporations such as JC Pennys)
Well Google decided to make some changes & many of the major article directories and ‘content farms’ are after getting hit badly after Google rolled out this new update to their algorithm & have seen their rankings drop dramatically.
One of the major losers has been EzineArticles.com A site I use a lot and I’m sure a lot of people reading this post do too. Over at Search Engine Land there’s been some number crunching going on & EzineArticles.com has lost over 130,000 positions in Google!
As you can see above lots of other well known sites were hit hard too.
Over at Abbamont.com Dan Abbamont has done some keyword position comparisons from before & after the Google update. Here are some of the EzineArticle.com changes:
- ezine – From #1 to #2
- ezine articles – From #1 to #1
- cell phone lookup – From #1 to #2
- reverse phone lookup – From #21 to #35
- “lowest air fare” – From #>100 to #>100
- copy paste traffic review – From #4 to #34
- cell phone – From #>100 to #>100
- reverse cell phone lookup – From #4 to #2
- phone number lookup – From #26 to #36
- ezine article – From #1 to #1
- phone lookup – From #31 to #>100
- acai berry – From #17 to #>100
For a full list check out Dan’s post here.
So what does the algorithm change mean for you? Well straight from Google’s mouth here’s what the update means:
In the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. 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.
So the bottom line is simple. Create original content that will entertain, inform, educate and help your readers. Give value to your readers & make sure your site is useful to them & it keeps people coming back to your site over & over again.
So what it really comes down to is creating content for your readers & not for the search engines.
So have you been effected by the Google Farmer update? How you seen your rankings drop? Did you have high ranking EzineArticles in Google? Leave your comments below.
**UPDATE** Ezine Articles has acknowledged this issue & will be making changes to their site, editorial review & guidelines in response to the Google Farmer algorithm
**UPDATE2** Ezine Articles have made 5 changes to their editorial review process including changing the minimum article word count to 400 & doubling the amount of review time per article.
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Thanks for posting this, Mark. I’d heard Google was about to make similar changes, but it’s quite dramatic reading it. Does it mean that submitting articles to Ezine Articles and Articles Base has gone the way of the dinosaur?
I just wasted a bunch of time updating some stuff on Hubpages. Oh well, I never took that seriously anyways. Now I can focus more on my own blog and work on getting my own real domain. The new Google algorithm should not hurt that.
Hi Richard,
I don’t think it’s gone the way of the the ‘dinosaur’ but certainly it wont be as effective as it used to be.
Mark
HI Mark,
Thanks for the update.
Ezineart blog is in a frenzy based on Christoper Nights response to Google.
Some ideas on the table are – raising the minimum number of words per article is good.
discontinuing the wordpress plugin..bad idea….
changing links to no follow…bad idea…he has mentioned it is completely off the table now…
how will this change your strategy?…move to more video based marketing…600 word articles?
Hi Art,
I’m not going to stop article marketing. At the end of the day good content that people link to is still the ‘bread & butter’ of SEO. But I think yes I will start doing a lot more video tutorials ans start searching for article directories & places to submit content that haven’t been so badly effected by this algorithm update.
Mark
Hi Mark,
I agree…good quality content will always prevail..I hope…
To my mind there are two types of websites (and two types of business).
One type of website DREADS changes to the Google algorithms. That’s because they are not putting the user first and have been gaming the Google system to appear in top positions. When Google comes up with changes to put the user first again, these types of sites have to move quickly to get back into position.
The other type of site WELCOMES changes to the Google algorithm. These sites are genuine authority sites that add value and a positive user experience. Each Google algorithm change does a little more to uncover these sites from the flotsam and garbage that are hiding them. These sites are future proofed, and spend all their time adding more and more value rather than fighting with Google.
The two types of businesses are those that dread Google algorithm changes, and those that welcome them.
Well put Andy. It’s all about creating content for the user & NOT the search engine.
Mark
Hi. As usual it always boils down to good, useful and insightful quality content that makes sense to users. That is all that Google has ever tried to do and if you have a good quality site(s) then you have nothing to worry about.
It’s the people that are just trying to make a quick buck that really need to be concerned.
I don’t know but i still see my site ranking improve very fast. Is that mean my website got a good content ?
Ezinearticles.com is likely to go further down as people keep on posting 250 word articles but now they have revised it to 400 words to make sure they get quality content. What sort of rubbish is that? People will put in more fluff content to make make it to 400.
Moreover, doubling the review time will increase it to 15 days and they are already reluctant to give platinum accounts to non natives. Who wants to wait for 15 days for an article to be approved. That’s total nonsense!
I’m really interested to see how Google’s ad revenue is affected by this. I’m guessing it’s going to drop a lot since many article directories rely on Adsense as a source of revenue. This includes Hubpages, Ezinearticles, Suite101, and Buzzle.
I’m curious as to why Squidoo does not seem to be losing a lot of traffic (take a look at their quantcast data). I’m also wondering why sites like sciencedaily.com weren’t hit since they literally copy and paste their articles from other science websites.
Anybody have any theories?
And here was me, about to launch a major article posting campaign on directories like Ezinearticles, Article Bae, Article Cube, ETC.
Hi Dean, article marketing isn’t dead by any means. The bottom line is good content gets shared & gets you links back to your site, which gets you ranked well. Of course you should combine your article marketing with other strategies like videos marketing, social media, press release distribution and so on, so you get links back from a variety of sources. That’s my two cents anyway.
Mark
I launch major campaigns on article directories. and I was doing very well traffic wise. Google’s update really sucks for the ones submitting quality and informative content.
juan
I took what I consider to be a big hit. I have over 830 indexed pages of high quality content. However, from time to time I’ve reposted some Ezine articles that I felt would be beneficial to my readers. All in all around 10 articles from Ezine really. I went from #1 to #4 on my main keyword. My advice. Don’t copy or link back to Ezine at all! It will get you slapped!
There will always be a cat and mouse game between Big G & SEO guys and in the end, everyone knows who will win.
Never could understand why they ranked ezines in the first place. Matt Cutts has been telling us for years that content should be original, unique and relevant for years. People just dont listen and it took Google some time to start acting.
This is not bad news to those who chose to follow what google has said all along and are getting the traffic these guys had for a couple years.
On the other hand what about Google themselves, whom scraps the Internet and repackages it.
Build fresh, original, relevant websites and you’ll be fine.
Take this EzineArticles! I think that from now on they will fail hard. A good writer can make good article with 100 words, now they must go with 400. Also ezine articles want too much from the writers but from now on they wont give the same traffic and peoples will leave it.
Miroslav from http://www.internetgurublog.com
@art not only good quality also to be considered is relevancy.
I just find it hilarious that everyone I talked a while ago about generating legit traffic told me to focus on writing article for Ezine. It’s a good thing I didn’t do it because they took a huge hit! Good article. Thanks for sharing.
So according to this article, ezinearticles and other article directories are publishin crap.
I am a member of BlogSynergy.com . How can we make sure that our content is good enought to favor this Panda update?
I think that from now on they will fail hard. A good writer can make good article with 100 words, now they must go with 400.
Very good information. Duplicate content is not totally useless but should not get high ranked. Thank you.
It is frightening that one company has the power to effect a website so greatly. Google has the ability to destroy many online businesses. I think the update is for the greater good of internet quality. But its sad to see websites drop in the rankings at such alarming rates.
I realize this is an older post written in February but I for one was SO Happy to see Christopher Knight’s blog get slapped hard. He sits on his throne playing article marketing god with his spammy, trashy, web 1.0 website banking $50K a week from Adsense. Good job Google. Ezinearticles is very low-quality in terms of user experience, content, and operations.
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