The Google Penguin update is perhaps the most talked about internet topic recently along with the release of Windows 8. Among search engine optimizers and enthusiast, it is surely the most discussed one. SEO practitioners, who painstakingly learnt old SEO practices like backlinking, content writers who were habituated of keyword stuffing (and plagiarism also, sadly) are totally flabbergasted. Sites who enjoyed years of dominance on the SERPs (Search Engine result Pages) through old SEO practices, lost rank considerably. And all this is because Google, the internet king, has decided to get rid of “low quality contents”, or the “spammy contents” as they are called informally.
(Top ten sites who lost traffic and ranking after the update from Google. Courtesy: wisestartupblog.com)
The question which bothers us the most, here at Search Eccentric, is how Google will recognise the so-called “low quality contents”. No, Mr Brin and Mr Page will not be reading all the 6 billion or more pages Google has indexed nor any of their employees at the Google will do so. They have come up with an algorithm and pushed it forward which will do the job for them.
Spams or low quality contents are used by many sites just to get traffic, without caring how useful the content is for the user. If we remember, Google also came up with an option like “exclude this site from search results” a few years ago which gave users a manual way of refining their search. Yes, people want real content, helpful, useful and meaningful. So, Google automated the process. Although, Google didn’t publish the changes (oh how easy it would have become for the Search Engine Optimizers!! ) but in their blog they advised us to ask ourselves few questions through which Google ideology will reflect in deciding the worth and therefore the rank of any site. Questions like , will you give your credit card details to this site? or will you log-in to access more content in this site?, indicate one thing clearly, Google wants to check how much the user is trusting the site or how much trustworthy the site is proving to the user. So, that’s what it boils down to, trustworthiness. Of course, you will not trust a site which has shallow content with lots of links (the remaining scar of old SEO practices) nor you will like to return there during another search. Better remove it from your SERP (by lowering its rank and putting it into the “den of nonexistence”) and send you to better sites which can satiate your query by providing information and contents which you seek. In other words, we are back to square one, put fresh and useful content.
The change always affects some innocents and this Google update is no different. When site like ezinearticles, who actually reviews articles before publishing it, is hit, we need to ponder about the usefulness and efficiency of this algorithm change. But Google is Google after all and we can surely hope that it will come up with patches soon which will reduce the count of casualty of innocents.
Business head Vibhu Satpaul, Search Eccentric sounded reassuring, however. “We always stick to the fair practices and thus in our huge client base only 5-7% were hit as innocent casualty and by adopting the measures we took for the unaffected sites we negated the effects pretty fast.” he was quoted saying.
