Google made a rather big update to Panda search metrics which is being called Panda 2.5 last Thursday.
Searchmetrics.com listed the biggest winners and losers on it blog a couple of days ago.
eHow owned by Demand Media, a company we cover in our domain name Parking Stock Index, was actually one of just a handful of winners listed as content farms by SearchMetrics.com although LiveStrong.com another Demand Media Property was a loser.
Here are some of the biggest losers:
| SEO Visibility | SEO Visibility | Lost | Lost in % | |
| 25.09.2011 | 02.10.2011 | |||
|
447.586
|
100.513 | -347.073 | -78% | |
|
552.925
|
213.059 | -339.866 | -61% | |
|
162.759
|
11.379 | -151.380 | -93% | |
|
197.936
|
48.346 | -149.590 | -76% | |
|
173.596
|
54.262 | -119.334 | -69% | |
|
130.870
|
22.637 | -108.233 | -83% | |
|
124.618
|
19.202 | -105.416 | -85% | |
|
155.522
|
65.490 | -90.032 | -58% | |
|
123.707
|
42.661 | -81.046 | -66% | |
|
98.848
|
24.146 | -74.702 | -76% | |
|
89.854
|
15.441 | -74.413 | -83% | |
|
148.875
|
75.429 | -73.446 | -49% | |
|
101.178
|
33.595 | -67.583 | -67% | |
|
111.587
|
49.174 | -62.413 | -56% | |
|
80.166
|
25.460 | -54.706 | -68% | |
|
163.390
|
113.390 | -50.000 | -31% | |
|
72.306
|
25.129 | -47.177 | -65% | |
|
61.558
|
18.747 | -42.811 | -70% | |
|
87.048
|
45.118 | -41.930 | -48% | |
|
55.642
|
15.190 | -40.452 | -73% | |
|
62.227
|
26.278 | -35.949 | -58% | |
|
52.015
|
18.010 | -34.005 | -65% | |
|
54.307
|
20.504 | -33.803 | -62% | |
|
60.028
|
27.675 | -32.353 | -54% | |
|
80.590
|
50.694 | -29.896 | -37% | |
|
42.777
|
13.468 | -29.309 | -69% |
Here are some of the biggest winners:
These are the winners of the Panda 2.5 update:
| Domain | SEO Visibility | SEO Visibility | Win | Win in % |
| 25.09.2011 | 02.10.2011 | |||
|
5.258.325
|
5.787.520 | 529.195 | 10% | |
|
738.030
|
924.621 | 186.591 | 25% | |
|
586.955
|
711.785 | 124.830 | 21% | |
|
1.218.625
|
1.320.032 | 101.407 | 8% | |
|
324.608
|
417.576 | 92.968 | 29% | |
|
248.953
|
329.781 | 80.828 | 32% | |
|
783.956
|
861.373 | 77.417 | 10% | |
|
572.825
|
643.087 | 70.262 | 12% | |
|
692.107
|
761.589 | 69.482 | 10% | |
|
958.356
|
1.027.422 | 69.066 | 7% | |
|
767.931
|
835.620 | 67.689 | 9% | |
|
564.718
|
631.089 | 66.371 | 12% | |
|
198.156
|
262.246 | 64.090 | 32% | |
|
646.698
|
708.610 | 61.912 | 10% |
In terms of “content farms” here are the biggest losers in terms of percentage were:
| Domain | OPI_today | OPI_last | Difference | % |
| blippr.com | 11,024 | 529,970 | -518,946 | -97.9% |
| suite101.com | 19,874 | 263,529 | -243,655 | -92.5% |
| tradekey.com | 2,970 | 38,237 | -35,267 | -92.2% |
| associatedcontent.com | 23,687 | 281,343 | -257,656 | -91.6% |
| articlesbase.com | 13,492 | 157,958 | -144,466 | -91.5% |
| helium.com | 7,170 | 83,184 | -76,014 | -91.4% |
| faqs.org | 15,971 | 140,951 | -124,980 | -88.7% |
| freedownloadscenter.com | 23,216 | 192,128 | -168,912 | -87.9% |
| mahalo.com | 56,305 | 442,563 | -386,258 | -87.3% |
| allbusiness.com | 2,694 | 19,995 | -17,301 | -86.5% |
| ezinearticles.com | 35,691 | 259,516 | -223,825 | -86.2% |
| essortment.com | 13,507 | 93,993 | -80,486 | -85.6% |
| americantowns.com | 6,109 | 38,783 | -32,674 | -84.2% |
| findarticles.com | 11,648 | 70,404 | -58,756 | -83.5% |
| howtodothings.com | 10,605 | 62,372 | -51,767 | -83.0% |
| lovetoknow.com | 30,289 | 157,037 | -126,748 | -80.7% |
| hubpages.com | 122,796 | 618,406 | -495,610 | -80.1% |
| wisegeek.com | 113,436 | 489,014 | -375,578 | -76.8% |
| buzzle.com | 78,206 | 335,304 | -257,098 | -76.7% |
| doityourself.com | 8,069 | 33,231 | -25,162 | -75.7% |
| merchantcircle.com | 20,195 | 83,133 | -62,938 | -75.7% |
| business.com | 10,961 | 42,877 | -31,916 | -74.4% |
| thefind.com | 13,107 | 46,769 | -33,662 | -72.0% |
| trails.com | 9,607 | 32,385 | -22,778 | -70.3% |
The biggest Losers in terms of viability of content farms were:
| Domain | OPI_today | OPI_last | Difference | % |
| answerbag.com | 662,274 | 1,673,406 | -1,011,132 | -60.4% |
| answers.com | 682,274 | 1,673,410 | -991,136 | -59.2% |
| blippr.com | 11,024 | 529,970 | -518,946 | -97.9% |
| hubpages.com | 122,796 | 618,406 | -495,610 | -80.1% |
| about.com | 3,199,369 | 3,689,144 | -489,775 | -13.3% |
| mahalo.com | 56,305 | 442,563 | -386,258 | -87.3% |
| wisegeek.com | 113,436 | 489,014 | -375,578 | -76.8% |
| associatedcontent.com | 23,687 | 281,343 | -257,656 | -91.6% |
| buzzle.com | 78,206 | 335,304 | -257,098 | -76.7% |
| suite101.com | 19,874 | 263,529 | -243,655 | -92.5% |
| ezinearticles.com | 35,691 | 259,516 | -223,825 | -86.2% |
| freedownloadscenter.com | 23,216 | 192,128 | -168,912 | -87.9% |
| articlesbase.com | 13,492 | 157,958 | -144,466 | -91.5% |
| lovetoknow.com | 30,289 | 157,037 | -126,748 | -80.7% |
| faqs.org | 15,971 | 140,951 | -124,980 | -88.7% |
| examiner.com | 43,101 | 142,296 | -99,195 | -69.7% |
| essortment.com | 13,507 | 93,993 | -80,486 | -85.6% |
| helium.com | 7,170 | 83,184 | -76,014 | -91.4% |
| merchantcircle.com | 20,195 | 83,133 | -62,938 | -75.7% |
| ask-leo.com | 57,140 | 117,708 | -60,568 | -51.5% |
| findarticles.com | 11,648 | 70,404 | -58.756 | -83.5% |
| livestrong.com | 34,554 | 87,086 | -52,532 | -60.3% |
| howtodothings.com | 10,605 | 62,372 | -51,767 | -83.0% |
| tradekey.com | 2,970 | 38,237 | -35,267 | -92.2% |
And finally the Winners of the “content Farms” were:
| Domain | OPI_today | OPI_last | Difference | % |
| wikihow.com | 455,031 | 254,087 | 200,944 | 79.1% |
| answers.yahoo.com | 524,056 | 406,523 | 117,533 | 28.9% |
| ehow.com | 944,950 | 831,961 | 112,989 | 13.6% |
| howstuffworks.com | 666,073 | 574,523 | 91,550 | 15.9% |
| huffingtonpost.com | 1,262,562 | 1,173,229 | 89,333 | 7.6% |
| facebook.com | 3,157,406 | 3,094,804 | 62,602 | 2.0% |
| instructables.com | 80,142 | 68,685 | 11,457 | 16.7% |
That’s why relying on search engines for traffic is not a viable business strategy. The web is a joke.
Funny how Youtube.com and Android.com, both owned by Google, are big winners in the Google update. Must just be a total coincidence.
very interesting
but where are TechCrunch and Mashable?
I agree totally with Beach Market.
Websites that have google ads have improved ranking. Google has interest in improving their chances of CPC profit. Nobody cares about junk content or the user. It’s mooooney!!!
howstuffworks.com google ads
ehow.com google ads
hubpages.com google ads
…………………..
It doesn’t matter to google if they don’t own the website when they own the ad space.
Why all the hatred for ehow.com from people? They might not be a good source of in-depth content, but when you are looking for an overview on a subject they typically provide good content.
I noticed that all the “content farm winners” are sites that I seem to visit somewhat regularly when asking questions online. They have good content and good answers.
I think Google did a good job with Panda. At least according to the list above.
troy it’s because they rely on serp ranking to be read. and they need to game the system heavily to achieve ranking. they do not rely on the quality of their “content”.
beachmarket +1
but how does on define “content farm”? wsj, forbes, etc. are not content farms? they hire writers who spew out copy. they’re better than most, but all quality is in decline. that’s obvious.
serps is a silly way to evaluate quality. but that’s what users use. whatever is “popular” they assume is of reasonable quality. not true. seo people are gaming the serps.
the whole system is dysfunctional.
sites try to “protect” their content from any reasonable indexing scheme i.e. they make their content more difficult to search. can a user search for content across a large number of sites easily? no. because sites do not cooperate to make that possible.
so search engines compensate for this… they crawl all possible sites aggressively and cache the entire lot. some sites get upset. others acquiesce. others are desperate to be crawled. seo customers. but all sites recognise the search engine beats their own indexing system every time.
sites do not make it easy to scan their content quickly. hence people use search engines. so maybe the sites make it easier for search engines to scan their content. but still, they don’t do this for users. and then they get upset because the search engine is unfair or too powerful.
dumb and dumber.
I am surprised to see ehow.com having a win from it. I had also wondered if having Google ads on your site was a positive or negative. I think if they’re too spammy then it can be a negative to the SE’s, even Google. However I think if you have a natural amount and the competition has other branded ads then I think it would help in Google. Not sure really though.
The economics and money of it, including space for ads (unless it is excessive) has nothing to do with Panda as google keeps the search pure and protected. Panda is about user experience. If you try to read into why a wesbite went up or down look at end user behavior patterns. If you can get users to comeback and stay on your site you are in.
It seems like Google wants content to be more editorial. Whenever you researched how to do anything on the internet last year before Panda, you would get top pages full of 300 to 500-word articles from content farms, all sharing the same information. So basically, one article written 20 times.