http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/high-quality-sites-algorithm-goes.html Over a month ago we introduced an algorithmic improvement designed to help people find more high-quality sites in search. Since then we’ve gotten a lot of positive responses about the change: searchers are finding better results, and many great publishers are getting more traffic. Today we’ve rolled out this improvement globally to all English-language Google users, and we’ve also incorporated new user feedback signals to help people find better search results. In some high-confidence situations, we are beginning to incorporate data about the sites that users block into our algorithms. In addition, this change also goes deeper into the “long tail†of low-quality websites to return higher-quality results where the algorithm might not have been able to make an assessment before. The impact of these new signals is smaller in scope than the original change: about 2% of U.S. queries are affected by a reasonable amount, compared with almost 12% of U.S. queries for the original change.
Is this the preview coming up on the right when you move the mouse over a site in the results? And also the local business listings have merged with organic ones.
Hey Bella, this preview that appears on the right when you hover over a result in the SERPs has been there for a couple of months and doesn't have anything to do with it. I'm guessing this is the farmer update rolled out to everyone. Although funnily in the SERPs I optimize for I've actually noticed good sites falling out and content farms staying put... very peculiar
Thanks Edward H. this appears to be the most significant amendment to Google's algorithm in recent years. I was wondering if anybody has noticed any significant amendments to Google's rankings yet. I haven't seen anything significant within Google UK and wondered if anybody had seen anything that we all in the SEO industry should be aware of. Cheers Guys.
What many don't understand about this update is that it was never claimed to be a "Farmer" update (tackling content farm sites)... It's called the "PANDA" update... The SEO world started to call it that (FARMER or FARM) because they were noticing sites that basically participated in Content Farms, were getting penalized or devalued or whatever you want to call it.. And that there was a hint earlier on that this was going to happen. I have several sites, if you want to call it that, that participate in content farms and quite frankly rank on the first page. But the content they provide, is out of this world and Google loves it. There is a lot more that goes into why your site was affected... Mostly because Google just classified your site as "Piece Of SHIT"....No longer valuable to a reader or searcher. Not necessarily because your site had content the same as other sites, or that you copied content or that your site participates in a "Content Farm"..lol. I have worked on and ranked a lot of sites on the first page of Google for many upon many targeted keywords with just my article marketing tactics.. And only using article marketing... Depending on the competition though and where the site sits already in the SERPs, I do have to throw in a few other backlinking techniques to give it the boost it needs that it never had. But, back to the article marketing that I do.. I basically submit the same BAD ASS UNIQUE QUALITY article to 1,000s upon 1,000s of other websites, blogs, forums, groups, and so-on. All those backlinks point back to website/page and rank the crap out of it...BOOOM!... Now, is that participating in a "Content Farm"? Probably, but its powerful and works.... Whatever you do, DON'T PANIC.. Asses the true problems of your website, ask around, there are lots of people on here and other forums willing to help. Don't be so quick to blame anyone other than yourself. GC