Google is cleaning up its search results by cracking down on content farms and other websites which do not have any original or meaningful content. Google's actions are a reaction to the fact that Internet users are getting increasingly frustrated on getting useless search results for most of their searches.
It has become common to see websites with low-quality content show up in the top search results, ahead even of more authoritative websites such as government websites and medical association websites. Websites with shallow content and increasingly even websites with ripped off content are able to get into the top search results because of clever SEO tricks. The search giant wants its users to be able to see only sites with real content.
To achieve this Google is making changes to its algorithms to improve its search results. On its target: websites that are basically web spam created out of paid links, scraped content and violations of Google's webmaster guidelines. But tech experts see Google's actions as being more than just altruistic measures aimed at giving its users a meaningful web experience. They point out that if people start leaving Google for other search engines, Google's cash-cow – AdWords, will be threatened.
Google is now enlisting users interested in combating the prevalence of low-quality websites through its Chrome browser. Chrome now has an extension, called Personal Blocklist, which allows users to block a site. The user will not see results from that domain and the data is reported to Google to improve its search results. The extension stores a list of all the blocked domains and users have the option of unblocking a particular website.
In February, Google announced changes to its algorithm that resulted in changes to nearly 12% of its U.S. query results. One of the biggest content farms is Demand Media which owns eHow.com, Cracked.com and others. It has claimed that this move is not going to affect it in any major way since it is increasingly getting traffic from social media websites like Facebook and Twitter.
Two new search engines, DuckDuckGo and Blekko have teamed up to take on both Google and the content farms. Blekko already gets over a million queries a day and the site shows only pre-approved searches in seven areas. DuckDuckGo emphasizes search privacy and security. Blekko says that the partnership will focus on eliminating spam from search.
The SEO industry often tries to portray itself as being divided into whitehat SEO and blackhat SEO companies. Whitehat SEO is supposed to be about following legal and ethical techniques and blackhat SEO is what Google and even the industry considers illegal or unethical techniques. But for Google now, SEO and content farms are definitely out of favor.
