Google was under a lot of pressure to make an update that cast the “content mills” from its index. With the heavy pressure of the tech media community, spunky upstarts like Blekko calling the company out, and an acknowledgment from Google of an increase in spam on its index, the search engine giant had to act both quickly and effectively. Their most recent major algorithm change, known in the tech community as the “farmer update,” was released with bullet speed and did a great job at getting rid of a lot of spam – but at what cost?
In any war, some inncoents will be hurt, and that seems to include the war on spam. When the update went live, thousands of smaller sites lost some ranking, with some losing literally all SERP visibility. This was primarily seen in the blogging and ecommerce community, but the reach could be felt far and wide.
Google Fellow Amit Singhal stated that the company is aware of some fallout, and that “no algorithm is 100% accurate.” That isn’t an excuse or escape hatch, though. Rather, it’s Singhal’s way of saying that the company knows there’s more to work on, and that they are already plugging away, aiming on bringing the algorithm “close to 100%.” He has stated that engineers are already at work on those adjustments, building an extra “layer” on the foundation of the farmer algorithm.
While some rumors have stated that these alterations have already been made, Google has confirmed that any changes already present are minor (part of the “more than one alteration per day” that Google’s algorithm typically sees); the layer they are referring to is yet to come. In other words: “Innocents” hurt by this update will be thrown a floater in the near future!
[via Wired]
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Google to Save the Innocents Hit by “Farmer Update”
