Today Matt Cutts who is the Principal Engineer at Google, posted on Google’s blog that they was gunning to eliminate junk sites, including what many would refer to as mini-sites and content farms from being indexed in Google.
“Just as a reminder, webspam is junk you see in search results when websites try to cheat their way into higher positions in search results or otherwise violate search engine quality guidelines.”
“As we’ve increased both our size and freshness in recent months, we’ve naturally indexed a lot of good content and some spam as well. ”
“To respond to that challenge, we recently launched a redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for spammy on-page content to rank highly. ”
“The new classifier is better at detecting spam on individual web pages, e.g., repeated spammy words—the sort of phrases you tend to see in junky, automated, self-promoting blog comments.”
“And we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.”
“We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.”
As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.”
In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content. ”
This could be very troubling for companies like Demand Media which has frequently been referred to as a content farm and those companies that seek to build out “mini sites” in hopes of getting the sites ranked in Google.
The good news if any for such companies is Google is not the only search engine although it does have a market share in excess of 60%
I am glad Google took my advice and I knew it all along that the law will always caught up with you.
Goodbye demand media, goodbye Ep*k, goodbye whyfark, and others.
All those lazy bastards!!!
Now you know why everything they do fails, If it were not for there search engine they would be a dead company. Google has ruined a lot of businesses.
I’ve heard the SEO folks want to reduce the influence of exact-match domains in search results but IMO pagerank at times is overvalued. I come across sites with PR which rank well because they are one page of a larger high PR site but the content on that page really doesn’t merit its high search rank for the search phrase in question. It just ranks because of the PR not because of the on-page content. So Google needs to continue adjusting its algorithm…
I think we’ll continue to see further implementation of “trustrank” rather than “pagerank”
Now! If the Blogs …
Would get rid of the BIG CHEESE’S and there crew of 6
(bogus marketer posters)
then all BLOGS would have no-spam and better content
and no info commercials, yay.
Landon
If only you could get Mr. Cutts to do some work for me
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
Continuing to make Morgan Linton look like the smartest guy on the planet…
@ MHB
LOL, Mr Cutts is at present on a educational tour …
however, i will extend perhaps an invatation as the
problem is one and the same,
perhaps he would enjoy being a Guest or whatever?
Meanwhile, it is “Mr Cutts goes to Washington”
“…including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.”
Hello facebook-style ‘likes’.
Easy. Get rid of all made for Adsense websites.
“I’ve heard the SEO folks want to reduce the influence of exact-match domains in search results but IMO pagerank at times is overvalued.”
I really hope not, that’s the real power of exact-match domains, more so than direct nav.
…Grrrr, ihatethatshit. 😉
Told ya so.
You watch, it won’t just be content farms, Google will keep knocking legit deep content pages down also to force them to start advertising.
The game keeps getting dirtier folks.
At what point in the future do you think that Google will become a paid inclusion search engine?
Seems this is the direction that they are headed.
Joey
If you read Mr. Cutts entire blog post the answer to your question is contained in it.
Never
It is very clear why Matt Cutts made this posting this week.
If Demand goes public this month. And, Google starts penalizing
Demand’s content farm sites next month, G don’t want to
be involved in the lawsuits and SEC investigations when the
shares drop drastically.
Google wants to be in front of this PR nightmare.
If exact match domains (especially gTLDs) start to loose their sway, we’re all in trouble! I’d prefer if google stopped giving preference to a name simply because of its age. In some scenarios it works but all to often you see a crappy name registered in the early to mid 90s outranking it’s direct match counterpart.
Geez people – Google has plans to consume more and more of the paid clicks for themselves. Look at any search for hotels, car rentals, restaurants – all the information is right there on page one with a little balloon right next to it.
As domainers that have tremendous net worth and hold 100,000’s+ of exact phrase domain names, it is high time to put on our thinking caps and find a way to side-step all of their rules, policies, and unfair treatment.
It is high time we cooperatively start thinking about finding a better way, a better home!!!
Matt
It’s not about direct match domains losing there way, it’s about putting unique, relevant content on those domains
No, it’s about Google taking more and more of the business away from website owners, for their own profit!
You could have any extremely informative website with fantastic content, but it won’t get the traffic if Google circumvents it with their balloon listings on page one.
It won’t be profitable for the website owner if it’s an area Google has found to be profitable for their taking!
Kara, that makes no sense. All these sites with “reworded content” are there for the purpose of using Adsense. Google is profiting from that. In fact, a lot of those type of pages rank very high. I run into them daily.
They need to do away with all made for adsense websites.
Personally, I’m sick of these sites.
WQ – I analyze search engine data daily. It is my job. I’m not referring to sites built just for for Adsense – I did not say or refer to that!
I’m referring to good sites. Sites with worthy content, a site that doesn’t have Adsense, at all.
Example: Search for Sydney Hotels. SydneyHotels.com does not come up anywhere in the first 6 pages…
Yet, on the first page of Google results – one will find an entire list of hotels in Sydney – all very soon to be paid clicks for Google!!!
SydneyHotels.com doesn’t even have a page rank.
tha’ts problem 1
I remember that Rick Schwartz sold this domain I’m going to say maybe 6 or 7 months ago and of course when he owned it , the domain was parked and therefore had a 0 page rank.
Not sure how long you have the site up as it sits today, but these things take time.
When we took luxurybedding and discountbedding off of parking and made them into sites they went from having no page rank to having a page rank of 3 and they are listed number 1 under Google under the relevant terms
Kara, I’m referring to what you said : “it’s about Google taking more and more of the business away from website owners”.
You did not mention which types of websites you are speaking of but I’m speaking of the ones in the title of this thread. “Content farms”.
Get rid of these type of sites, problem solved. Would Google do that though? They have their links across millions of websites so I doubt it.
If LuxuryBedding.com is yours, I like it – it looks great! To be more exact though, what I’m referring to is Google taking the categories they know are big ticket, hugely searched for terms, and making them their own via their Page One “balloon” display – the massive hotels category, massive restaurant category, massive car rental category, and on, and on, and on.
Kara
Regarding Google is good to be king
Perhaps products – including luxury bedding will be next.
Hi,
There is no such thing as a “spam website” (site made just to earn money)…. it just a term made up by “SEO experts” & Search engine executives.
Google can and can not index anyone’s website they want if the index…that is on them. They index peoples sites all the time that do NOT want to b listed in their SE.
If they decide they do not like the site (They index themselves), they can and make it so no one ever finds it in a search or just take it out of all the “indexed” pages they LOVE to brag about…..they do it everyday.
Google would not even exist if it where not the use of “others people” Property…which they get mostly for free and use it however they see fit…and some people actually pay them to use their own property.
I will tell what “Spam” is when every search perform has:
1. 3 top google ads and 5-7 down the right side one first page
2. every search you do: a result from “Wikipedia” shows up in the #1 or#2 “Organic” search listing spots.
3. You do a search on Google and the entire first page contains information from 2000 -2008
Now That Is REAL SE Spam!
Peace To All,
Dan
____
And Google and “Big business” have been squeezing out the small business owner for years…. (you want to bid on An $4-$12+ PPC term?)
Just like “small business” is moving out of Ca for more “friendly small business states”….
Same thing happening to Google…it will not effect them much at first, but give it a couple years.
Here is a quote from: adage……
” According to an estimate from eMarketer, Facebook took in $1.86 billion in worldwide advertising revenue for 2010, a 151% increase over the company’s estimated 2009 advertising revenue of $740 million worldwide. Not surprisingly, the majority of that, $1.21 billion, was earned inside the U.S.”
“But what is surprising is the majority of revenue, 60% or $1.12 billion, was earned from smaller companies in 2010, those more likely to be using self-serve tools rather than work through a media agency. That’s greater than the $740 million coming from major marketers like Coke, P&G or Match.com”
“Example: Search for Sydney Hotels. SydneyHotels.com does not come up anywhere in the first 6 pages…”
@ kara – I think with SydneyHotels they had the domain pointed to some kind of white label solution, like this one of theirs > channelislandshotels.co.uk/
Looking at it now they have developed more of a proper site with content on it and I think this is VERY recent, give it 2 to 3 months and I think it’ll be up there on the first page of Mr G.
^^^^^ saying all that I just did a quick search for Sydney Hotels on google.co.uk and they are at the top of the list on page one just below the map ones.
Same thing with Google.com (viewed from the uk)
Hi again,
The small “mini sites” etc…. with Google ‘adsense’ on them have made the company: Billions of dollar over the last 3-5 years…..
They have their “own spammy websites” through their own “parking domain” website program…. which they make billions from….you have to domains that get a million or more unique visitors to them…
But,
They are just: “Mini Spam Parking Pages” ~ By their own definition what a “spam website” is…..
Why do they not start with their own: blogspot.com websites…. 60%+ would fall under “spam websites”… according to these “SEO masterminds definition of “spam websites”
Which of course really does no exist…content on any website is “what it is”….content.
Google has a lot more to worry about than this…
Look at the results of this Google search: This not the “ideal” example I wanted to use…but still 4 of the top 10 “organic results”…are Pre-2010…
That is…crappy results, when it is 2011
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=577&q=image+seo&aq=f&aqi=g4g-m6&aql=&oq=
________
Peace To All,
Dan
I think we would all prefer to have the skills, time and money to have a portfolio of websites , some start out as minisites and grow , some are stores and will always be stores. Google keeps changing everyday , no wonder bing is making ground
Well said
As long a s Google keeps changing their “polices & algorithm” changing everyday… you will have all the “SEO” companies in business…
The only reason “Bing” is doing so well as after years of trying to compete with Goggle…with “MS live search”… and pumping at least a billion+ into that…
They finely realized that MS was software company and not a SE company …
The, slight change…. made a Huge difference….
It is to bad they did not talk to me, as for at least 3 years before they did what they have now done now… separate their SE at least a ‘bit’ from MS…. BOOM….
(posted it about it many times on different forums etc…)
Success…
Bing has only about one degree of separation from the MS brand…they still would do better if they had more separation.
Just goes to show you what very “slight”… but very important one small adjustment can do.
Nothing wrong with a small well design “mini site”…even if it just a “parking page. IMHO…
Peace!
Dan
This is not about so much content as what Google is determining allowable or not.
I found it interesting and frustrating that Google started disallowing the use of domains like ( just an example ) CollegeXXXXXXTickets.com in the url direct if it was sent too TicketStub.com/CollegeXXXXXXTickets … they claimed that the link not just saying Ticketstub.com was misleading/deceptive/unacceptable. That it needed to be discontinued “or else”. Obviously, I did as they asked so as not to risk my account and just stuck with using the main site name with targeted ads.
But I think they are getting a bit crazy about their definitions of “Quality targeted traffic” and what is deceptive or misleading. If I use CollegeXXXXXXTickets.com and it directs then to the page of my site that deals specifically with College XXXXXX Tickets … how is that misleading or deceptive? They wanted College XXXXXX Tickets in their search … they chose the ad that showed the targeted CollegeXXXXXXTickets.com and when they clicked through they got results for College XXXXXX Tickets on a trusted site.
Now they require a specific site for any domain used like CollegeXXXXXXTickets.com to have a site ( I’m sure a mini site would be fine) but it all seems silly and overcontrolling to me.
good think
@Ira
I agree with your analysis.
Good content is a perception issue but spam and farming are abuses and most poeople agree thay are search engine “noise”.
As in your example I get tired of tickets thin affiliates showing up in every sports search. I have two sports sites that did well before search engine spamming and sports is a catagory that is loaded with them.
Google has curved the perception their way to produce profits and please large clients. This has resulted in some SERPs going down in quality.
Direct nav folks: Direct navigation does not need a search engine and the name is usually so good that the search engines can’t ignore it. 😉
Tough balancing act but someones has got to do it.
Hi Steve,
What happens to your business if the day should come “Google” decides your website is “noise” and drops your main home page and all your other pages to say page 24 for all the main keywords used to find your site? Because the only “sport’s related sites they want showing up are from company’s like ESPN, MLB, MLH , MLB, SI etc?
Peace,
Dan
Quality content – what is that? Duplicate content – what is that? Com’on Google, give me a break. What about all the news sites out there? Will they be deindexed because their content is certainly duplicated.
MHB I actually said sway not way. I was referring to the amount of credibility that an exact match gTLD carries currently in the Google algorithms. If we see less preference for these names, we will definitely feel the effects.
Google is all about stamping out the little guy. Their #1 goal is to make sure nobody can succeed in making a living online except established mega corporations.
Should anyone really be surprised?
THE LAUGH OF THE CENTURY:
Google = Non-transparent distribution of compensation earned for your site sending their advertisers traffic.
Then they say “oooh, we’re going to go after those mini sites and content farms” Really?
Start with every major cable provider, Microsoft and all other major corporations who load up those adlinks when you type in a domain that doesn’t exist or resolve.
Oh… and BTW, if you think making your money from Google is your ticket to financial freedom, just contact someone at their company, or even find something online, that CLEARLY STATES WHAT YOUR COMMISSION IS when you help them get an adclick from your “content farm”.
Ludicrous. I never bought into Adsense since it existed because they don’t treat you like a “partner” or “associate” by telling you what you’re going to earn.
No matter HOW hard you work creating your own original content, and provide a legitimate category website, if you use Google adwords to depend on your income, you just end up like all of the big domainers now, stuck with 100,000’s of domains making at least 75% less then they did just 2 year ago.
Either you flip your domains to an end user, by contacting possible relevant businesses (lots of work), or you create an affiliate site (if you have a good typein domain), or you sell your own products (ebooks are great).
But to even give Google ANY consideration for providing you with income on your domains is a clown rubber nose. I’ve known this since 2004. For Google to act as if they’re hunting down anyone so they can “legitamize” their users’ searches is one of the biggest jokes domain investors have bought into.
FLIP, BUILD, SELL OWN PRODUCT, FULFILL, PLAY AFFILIATE. Those are the paths for your domains.
But forget about Google. And every SEO expert will tell you that there are NO GUARANTEES even if you pay them $1000 a month to ‘trick’ out your site, trying to stay ahead of the infamous Google algorithms.
Well said Stephen,
Google changing its ” infamous Google algorithms”…and other policy’s, every 12 minutes… Is the only reason “SEO”…is a business.
“SEO” should be ONLY about “WSO”…Website Optimization…making websites the best they can be, without even thinking of Google.
If Google want’s to start, cleaning house….they can start with their own “Blogger Blogspots….Over 60% of the are nothing but “spammy mini sites” according to their OWN definition(s)… of what a “spam website” is… and that the so called “SEO experts”… think. … Its ALL “BS”…has been for the past 3-4 years with Google…
Their day of reckoning is coming faster than most people think…. and so it is for a lot of the so called “SEO experts”
To “SEO” for Google, you have to:
“Jump through more hoops everyday, than all the Dolphins, Sea Lions and Wales at “Sea World” have to do on any given day”!
Peace,
Dan
Interesting, but suspicious.
Most “low quality” sites are nothing but ad farms anyways. There’s a conflict here, somewhere. Google says ads ARE useful information and ad revenue is GOOD for the Internet. And we’ll have to see how the Doublecluck client content farms respond.
But, getting rid of Ask.crap and eHow.crap WILL make Google content results a little more legitimate and useful.
Of course, a -.com search switch helps a lot, too.
UPDATE
Looks that Google has already changed some algorithms to combat “spammy sites”
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/28/google-changes-algorithm-to-reduce-spammy-sites/