My Theory on the Google Algo Change/Farmer Update

172 Comments

1. jeff pearson

   Hi Jen
   Makes perfect sense when you see it mapped out like that. Thanks for the Post.
   I currently have 3 ezinearticles at 1 on page 1, and the farmer algo hasn’t touched them. Now I’ve read this I know why – they were pure info articles, no sales, no resource box. Makes sense how you tell it!
2. JamestheJust

   Jennifer – that’s the best analysis I’ve read yet – no kidding you put some time into it (or someone sure did on your behalf! Thanks!).

   I had forgotten about the spammy niches, and AdSense has their own ToS about that as well, no adult sites, gambling, etc. – that really does make a lot of sense…

   I’ve also read elsewhere how many who autoblog haven’t been hit, but there could be other reasons they weren’t affected (such as percentages of junk articles in these niches compared to the whole – or perhaps some other reason).

   This is helpful to chew on – thankfully I’m nowhere near those niches, and might explain why I haven’t been hit at all. 🙂

   Thanks again for the analysis – personally I think you’re onto the meat and taters.
3. Andrew Haddleton

   Wow Jennifer

   What a fantastic piece of research. It certainly makes lots of sense. And I’m astounded at the sheer amount of pages EZA has for those 7 topics. I think I’ve had 10% of those fired into my in-box so I’m all for them applying their own sanctions / censorship.

   Some will complain that it’s contra to the “free” speech on the Internet but that was 10 years ago and, to be honest, bombarding useful sites, and EZA is a useful site, with trash (excluding your articles of course), doesn’t do anyone any favours.

   Nice work.
4. NGIH THOMAS

   Thanks again for the analysis – personally I think you’re onto the meat and taters
5. AnneMarie Callan

   Thanks so much for putting all that together Jennifer … makes total sense. I was actually tempted to go for the 100 articles content but something kept stopping me … glad I listened to my gut feeling. If everyone did it, the internet would be blasted with ezine articles for every term possible.
6. Peggy

   Hey Jen:

   Great Post! I have read a lot about this topic since it happened and could not really get my head around it. This is the first presentation of the topic that has made any sense to me. One question, if over saturation is the problem, and I agree with that theory, why would Ezine not take a hit for the IM niche. You would think there would be gazillions of URLS in the IM niche?

   Thanks for the great information.

   Peggy
7. PotPieGirl

   Thanks everyone. This post took a LOT of time…my little brain hurts!

   @Jeff – I was checking my ezinearticle stats and rankings today and, for the most part, all seems to be ok. However, I won’t be able to REALLY tell until some more time passes and there is more info in my author stats.

   @James – Thank you – and it was all me. I never outsource my blog content here. An occasional guest post, but anything FROM me IS me.

   Yes, I have also heard of many, many autoblogs being nailed with all this too. However, many of those types of sites scrape content and crank it out in LARGE quantities each day so that alone could be the issue there.

   @ Andrew – thanks. I think EzineArticles will be back better than ever. You can’t keep a good site down if they’re willing to make the changes need to get back up. And from all I’ve seen from them, they are working HARD on making changes.

   @ I hear ya AnneMarie… it is amazing how much content these user-generated sites can crank out in a day, isn’t it?

   @ Peggy – thank you! the IM niche might not be the worst “offender” at the moment – or it is and I just didn’t notice it because I didn’t test any im-related phrases. But yes, the ‘biz op’ market can be a wing-dinger for content that Google might want to thin out.

   Guess we’ll see =)

   Again, thanks everyone for your feedback and time!

   Jennifer
   ~PotPieGirl
8. Jody

   I’m not sure what will happen with Hubpages – hopefully they’ll rebound. I certainly hope so, since I have content there! I’ve had mixed luck with my hubs. Some in one Hubpages account are still fine after the update and a couple tanked. They are also in the same niche.

   Another area that has apparently been dinged that wasn’t in your article is exact match domains. Domainers might not like that!
9. Keith Thompson

   Very nice research Jennifer! You make some great points. The decision now is where to go from here. I was sorely tempted to pull the plug on Ezine, especially after Chris Knight wanted to go no-follow. But he relented, and I guess since I don’t publish in those niches some further study is in order. My plan for 2011 is still to move away from the herd, and more into solo ads, guest articles and posts, and more Web 2.0. Roll with the tide!
10. PotPieGirl

    @ Jody – I think HubPages will be ok too as long as they work to BE ok again.

    As far as exact match domains getting hit – I have NOT noticed that at all (and I have a ton of them in all kinds of markets and I keep a close eye on them). Even now, looking at the google search for how to get your ex back, I see exact match domains doing quite well.

    To me, just because a site has an exact match (or near exact) domain name does not make it a content farm nor mean it cranks out TONS of thin useless content and clogging up the Google index.

    However, SOME exact match domains just MIGHT be doing that.(think auto-blog…many, many posts per day…and scraped content)..and yep, they probably would’ve gotten hit by this update. TONS of auto-blogs did.

    @Keith I don’t think this is the time for anyone to make any rash decisions on sites to contribute to – or not contribute to. However, this IS a good time to consider your topics, consider having your OWN sites…and prepare for rule changes from the sites hit.

    This will be interesting to watch as it all plays out, but as I told my WA folks – This Too Shall Pass.

    Thanks everyone for the feedback AND for the conversation!

    Jennifer
11. PotPieGirl

    Oh – and Keith?

    Roll Tide.

    🙂
12. Anne

    Hi Jennifer, my brain hurts just from reading that! I am going to read it again after breakfast.
    You have done a good chunk of research there and come up with some interesting theories – you are right, algorithms are complex things, so they are hard to unpick from their effects.
    I will write and not publish for a bit – as one of your commenters says ‘roll with the tide’.
    We owe a lot to people like you who put in the time to figure these things out and share with us. Thank you very much, and congratulations on your recent online anniversary.
13. Joey

    All I can say is wow! Anyone who has any confusion about the latest Google algorithmic changes needs to read this…in-depth, informative, great stuff! I concur with everything you said.

    These changes just go to show you that it’s not content that’s king but quality content that matters. I think putting your own spin on stuff and writing in your unique voice helps, too — if not the SERPs, most definitely you as a writer.

    Google apparently likes the way I write because the traffic to my blog has literally tripled within the past 3 or 4 days with no explanation (aside from the changes).

    When you do your job right, you don’t anything to worry about–no matter how many changes Google makes now or in the future because it’s objective has been the same since day one.
14. Ben

    Jennifer thanks for the time that you spent putting this together – very interesting stats.
    I think you hit the nail on the head here when you pointed out the sheer numbers of articles being written in those rather saturated areas.
    I think that there needs to be some serious editorial work done on the existing article database held by EzineArticles to prune the spun content from these areas.
    EzineArticles has to take a much tougher stance editorially against content submitted for inclusion in these areas to regain the trust of Google.
15. Kat

    Awesome post Jennifer. Thanks for doing this. I like when you keep us all up to date on Google’s thoughts and changes.

    I am confused about something that sounds contradictory. In this link you gave us:
    http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/110201-111315
    eHow is considered to be of low-quality. But in your post, you talk about eHow doing well.

    I find that the “get ex back” keyword niche gets a bad rap, yet I don’t think of this subject as “spammy” at all. The problem is is that there is a lot of article spun content out there on it. Also, you can only say the same thing about getting your ex back, ’cause really there isn’t a lot of options with it.

    I find Hub Pages looks cluttered, and this takes away my interest in reading or submitting Hubs. Yet they are adding a new ad program. The option to delete some of the unnecessary widgets isn’t there. Now that I know the links are “do not follow”, I’m losing my appeal in going on that site.

    I really like how Ezine Articles sounds professional, but my, do they ever have tons of content. At least I thought they do a good job of “pre-screening” submitted content.

    I love using Squidoo, and am used to it now. I just wish they came up with a professional sounding name. Seeing that cartoon squid also turns me off and could take away from readers taking the site/lens seriously (meaning hitting the “back” button).

    I haven’t used eHow. I have a few articles on Articlesbase, and like the layout of the site. However, I don’t find much traffic there.

    Thanks for letting me share my thoughts!
16. PotPieGirl

    @ Anne, Joey, and Ben – thank you so much!

    MY brain hurts from doing all this AND from THINKING about this for so long!

    Oddly, and somehow, this post here at PotPieGirl.com is on the Hot Urls list at Alexa now…near the top (meaning it’s one of the most active pages on the web right now). Crazy! Crossing my fingers that my server holds up!

    Thank you everyone! I love having the feedback and conversation. Whether I am right or wrong, it sure is something to think about, isn’t it?

    And when you think that those 5 sites alone contribute more than 3 MILLION pages to the Google index for just these 7 sample phrase….well, that blows my mind and helps me see the BIG picture of what Google is dealing with.

    I find it hard to believe that my theory can’t at least be PART of the problem….but hey, I could be totally off my rocker…lol!

    Jennifer
17. Darrell

    Jen, this is so typically you.. a whole lot of work, a whole lot of sense, and the grace and kindness to actually share it with everyone.

    Thank you!
18. Jody

    Exact match domains: good to know. i must have some of the wrong friends with exact match domains. 🙂 Some people said they had EMD sites that dipped at the update, but then mostly recovered. It is certainly true that some of the EMD domains are thin affiliate sites or autoblogs.
19. PotPieGirl

    Now, Darrell…don’t be TOO nice to me right now. My eyes hurt, my brain hurts AND it’s 4:30 am. If you’re TOO nice to me right now, I might cry (I’m SUCH a GIRL! hahahaha!)

    Thank you very much for your kind words!

    Jennifer
20. Dave

    A heartfelt thanks to you Jen for the great information you have gathered and passed along to us. I had recently decided to “dabble” in the ex back market. But something just didn’t feel right. Your research has convinced me that my gut feelings were right that the market is over saturated.
21. Anne

    Thanks Jennifer – this is definitely the most useful blog post on the subject I have found! Your time and effort are much appreciated by those of us who didn’t wuite know what it all meant – and panicked a little when Ezine and Articlesbase were sliding down the ranks! As awlays, you’ve hit the nail on the head for us all! You rock!
22. PotPieGirl

    @ Dave – you’re most welcome – thanks for stopping by and reading!

    I wouldn’t say this is a bad time for the “ex back” market. An individual site might do pretty darn well now.

    However, if you’re wanting to use these sites we talked about above for this, I might reconsider THAT at this time because those sites ARE saturated with content on that topic.

    Make sense?

    Thanks again!

    Jennifer
23. PotPieGirl

    Aww thanks, Anne! I put a lot into it HOPING that it could clear some things up for others who might be feeling dazed and confused over what’s going on – and possible causes.

    If even just ONE person is a little less confused, I feel this post, and the time taken to prepare for it, was TOTALLY worth-while.

    Thank you for your feedback!

    Jennifer
24. Mike

    Nice research. I think you nailed it. What I also notice is the majority of spam comments I get on the blog are from these 7 topics. Most get caught in the spam catcher, but some get through. My content on EZA and Article Base seem to be fine, but I don’t write in any of those topics, and craft each article before I submit it. My personal blog traffic is up quite a bit also, quite a bit. I think this is, hopefully, the end of auto-blogging, auto article spin, and other spammy junk that is clogging the internet. Ezine is just reacting to it.
    I’m not worried, in fact, I’m pretty tickled with the results so far.
25. Jan

    Hey Jennifer,

    When EZA announced the over saturation of certain “spammy” niches, it rang a bell in my head too.

    Whether you are right or wrong, it certainly makes sense to slap over production of essentially the same tired content.

    Don’t get me wrong, I also write in one of those niches and it is difficult to come up with new angles on it. No doubt I will be feeling the sting at EZA and other directories along with everyone else when the dust finally settles.

    But, as it stands right now, my own domains are actually increasing in traffic – which is a good thing.

    As you said, this will pass and it will be another issue this time next year.

    Thanks for taking the time to research and post results!
26. Angela

    Hi,

    I’ve been on your email list for a couple of years, after I bought your program. I’m also a Demand Media writer.

    There is another difference in eHow and other content sites that leads me to believe that Google is counting against the use of heavy keywords. We don’t write to keywords.

    We write to the title, no matter what it is. We use various lengths of articles, but nothing over 650 words. We don’t use long-tail keywords.

    We DO use Tags that are No More than 3 words. The Tag keywords need not even appear in the article.

    Google is trying to catch those who “game the system” and, in my opinion, the emphasis on keywords just took a nosedive.

    This last tweaking, helped us a lot.I would not be surprised to find that Google is using some type of basic grammar checker – such as counting down on a lot of “to be” verbs or sentences that do not follow the basic “subject/verb” structure.

    I think this is intended to draw away from poorly written user-content and emphasize professionally-written content.

    eHow articles go through rigorous grammar checks to correct the above errors before submission. When comparing old eHow content, not subject to this standard, to content produced within the past 1.5 years, there is a definite pattern in Google ranking.
27. Ian

    Great post Jennifer. I haven’t really done anything on any of those topics listed above. Except for one article on get your ex back when there was a contest for the Magic Of Making Up. Most of the stuff I’ve done are for promoting an Identity Theft Shield and promoting WA. Hopefully those don’t get blacklisted.
28. Ome

    Hi Jennifer, I love this post. How do you see OWM affected by these new rules ? Fyi, I am one of your OWM buyers.

    Keep up the great work 🙂

    —-

    Reply:

    Without saying anything I shouldn’t, let’s just say that when reading between the lines at the recommendations HQ gave to help people create better pages on that site, it hit me that those that follow One Week Marketing (and really LISTEN and DO what I say) should be a-ok. Naturally, the TOPIC of your campaign comes into play, but the general structure is good.

    Thanks for asking – that was an important question I missed in the main post!

    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
    
29. JamestheJust

    Ah – just to clarify – I only meant that you might have outsourced the research vs. the writing of your post.

    Of all the posts I’ve read, have to say this one is the easiest to get around – must be a Southern thing. 🙂

    —- Reply:

    A Southern Thang, huh? Yep, just might be, James! I hear what you were saying tho =) While I don’t post often over here at PotPieGirl.com, when I DO post, I get in and get my hands dirty and try to give y’all some real substance from my own quirky perspective on things.

    Thank you for reading and hanging out with me!

    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
    
30. Mike

    Hi, Jenn:

    Just a quick note to thank you for all your work. Like everyone else, I have been following this topic pretty closely. I have read over a dozen article to date, that
    do little more than state the new Google policy. Your article has provided 10 times more valuable information that all 12 combined.

    And I think your analysis is “spot on.” Maybe it is time for Chris Knight to “man up” and take a serious look at his business model. Is it just a lucky guess that 12+% of his topic are in the 7 “bad actors.” I don’t think so…good catch.

    Keep up the great work, this was a very eye openning post.

    —-
    Reply:

    Thanks, Mike! I’ve been reading all over the internet about this latest issue…and yep, there was a ton of pages saying the same thing as the rest. It gets a little old – especially when you’re looking for NEW information about it. I didn’t want to be a “Me Too” and just repeat what’s already been said because it’s a hot topic. However, I DID want to be able to provide an alternative perspective on this because it is an IMPORTANT topic (does that make sense?)

    The owners of the sites I talked about in this post have a very brilliant business model. Think about it… get others to work their bottoms off to create great content for YOUR site. I’m not being sarcastic either – I truly mean it. Chris Knight is a smart man and he WILL come out on top of this situation. And, as the signals for this new algo are tweaked, we will see natural improvements…and HOPEFULLY, a lot less “false positives”. I really, really feel for the sites that got nailed with all this that didn’t deserve to be!

    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl

    Mike
31. B.J.

    Thank you Jennifer for this great Google algo change post. As soon as I saw you had written a post I rushed over cause I knew you would be out there testing.

    I agree, with your assessment. As soon as I heard Squidoo hadn’t taken the same nosedive the other content sites had I suspected, as you obviously did, it was because they had already taken their hickey in 2009.

    One of the key phrases I thought was probably included on their list was weight loss. (I had Squidoo pages locked on those topics.) Did you test out any keywords in the weight loss niche?

    —–

    Reply:

    Hey BJ =)

    No, I didn’t test anything weight loss related – I only stuck to those 7 exact phrases as mentioned in the EzineArticles blog post – and those are only ONE keyword for each of those topics!

    Squidoo voluntarily jumped in the fire when they did their site-wide clean up in 2009 – and I had and STILL have MUCH respect for that (and yes, even *I* lost some content there during that storm). Their site/their rules – regardless of WHAT those rules are, we either follow them or go somewhere else. Rules Change. Google Changes. It’s all just a day in the life for an organic online marketer, ya know?

    Thanks for reading!

    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
    
32. Dave Vance

    Excellent research! It will be interesting to see how many of the “gurus” spin this in their marketing to continue to sell the “get rich on free traffic” internet marketing courses.

    —
    Reply:

    I hear ya, Dave! Big changes like this latest Google update breed fear – and fear can make a LOT of sales when the market temperature is right. I’m not here to breed fear… I’m more of a fan of passing info and insight to help CALM people when the waters get rough. If you’ve been around this game for any length of time, you know that “This Too Shall Pass” – and it will. The core concepts of making money online with organic marketing have NOT changed.

    Thanks for reading!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
33. Marya Miller

    Really refreshing to see someone put original thought and solid research into the “Farmer” issue. Thanks for the thoughtful analysis – some solid conclusions there.
34. instant cash empire

    I enjoy a lot while reading your posts Jennifer.
35. Joan Adams

    Thank you, Jennifer. This makes perfect sense!
    Yours is the first report on this “disaster” that has made any sense at all, in fact.
    In my mind, people go to the internet to socialize, learn something or buy something. So all of our sites cannot possibly be in danger.
    and like the Squidoo changes, I have decided to see this latest Google change as something good – that will improve the net for all of us.
    Your report is brilliant!

    —–

    Reply:

    Hey Joan!!!! Thank you! When I first started reading about this latest big algo change, I couldn’t make sense of it all when I looked at the list of sites that were being reported as being hit. It’s almost like they didn’t all belong together or something.

    Then it hit me that while Google DID say that this algo would affect about 11.8% of query spaces, they did NOT say that was ALL this algo change would affect. That’s why I narrowed my peak into this issue by talking about sites I am familiar with..and most of reading here are familiar with too. I think these sites are ones that DO apply to the “11.8%” of query spaces signal (as well as many some other new or adjusted signals).

    I have no solid idea if I am right or wrong here, but if I owned one of these sites and got hit by this update, this is an area I would DEFINITELY be looking at (as well as potential duplicate content issues ON site, quantity of content published each day [think auto-blog signal], internal linking, outbound links, bounce rate, INbound internal links, and ad presentation).

    Great to see you!

    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
36. Mark Reff

    Jennifer,

    Excellent analysis. Do you think that the number of ads surrounding each of the articles on ezine-type sites was a factor? I know that Ezine Articles has said it plans to reduce the number of ads on each page.

    —–

    Reply:

    Hiya Mark =) No, I don’t really think it is the NUMBER of ads specifically. I DO think it is about the presentation of ads that leads to an immediate negative perception of the page by a Google searcher (who then leaves the page immediately). That causes a bad bounce rate/time on site and these are metrics that Google DOES keep up with and they give us access to when we install Google Analytics on our site(s).

    Thanks for reading!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
37. Susan Greene

    After the Google algorithm shift, Ezine Articles considered making the links in its resource boxes (the ones that appear after each article and link to the author’s website) no follow. They’ve since decided not to go that route.

    I’m wondering what your opinion is on those links. Do you think Google has a problem with do follow links? Did you see that factor become an issue when Google slapped Squidoo?

    Reply:

    —–

    Hiya Susan – Nice to see you!

    I don’t think Google has a problem with do follow (or the absence of the NO follow ‘tag) at all. From my perception, in content links that link out to a themed/relevant topical page are a good thing..and are a natural part of writing online. I do think that the NUMBER of outbound links on a page can be an issue and I also feel pretty certain that linking out to BAD sites can be an issue.

    When Squidoo made those changes in 2009, they did limit the NUMBER of outbound links TO THE SAME DOMAIN. I think that was a very smart move. I mean really, how many links on one web page do you really need to ONE domain…and over-linking can surely be a sign of “CLICK HERE” garbage content – tho not always. (also to clarify, Squidoo was not ‘slapped’ in 2009 – they made those quality control changes voluntarily).

    I am very glad that EzineArticles decided to take the idea of adding no-follow to resource box links OFF the table. From an SEO perspective, I think it’s a good move. From a site owner perspective, I think it’s a good move, too. EA has good editorial processes in place (that will probably be stricter now) so they can monitor who they link out to. Also, let’s be really honest… when you are asking lots of other people to work really hard to submit unique, thoughtful crafted content to build YOUR site, shouldn’t you at LEAST give them a link (especially if you’re NOT sharing any ad revenue or anything with them)??? It’s the ol’ Zig Ziglar quote in action – ‘If you give enough other people what THEY want….” etc etc.

    If you are an article directory in this day and time (ie, user generated content), you can’t just TAKE from your authors. Yes, PROTECT yourself from being gamed, of course, but when you have amazing authors – as EA, for one, DOES have – there has to be something in it for them to have them continue to create the content for your article directory site. There are too many OTHER places people can take that content – starting with their OWN website.

    Anyway, I am glad to see they removed that idea from the list. I think was a smart move.

    Thanks for adding to the conversation!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
38. Geoffrey

    Great stuff, as always, Jennifer, and thanks so much.

    It sure looks like Squidoo has done a bunch of good stuff to keep them relevant and a really, really viable part of an online portfolio. I’ve ALWAYS hesitated with spending time on properties that I don’t own, but I really may need to get a few lenses going on some of my more major topics…none of which are at all related to the “Big 7” you outline above.

    Thanks again for all you do!
39. Charlie

    Much Mahalo for your WELL researched post, Jenn! I left you some gold over at Wealthy Affiliate University.

    Anyway, I just wanted to comment on your belief that outbound links are important, too. I did a short post on how your friend David Bocock revived his long lost ezine article by not creating more back links to his article, but actually improving his landing page his article linked TO. Thus, this supports your belief that quality outbound links are important, too.

    The safest thing we Internet Marketers can do is to work on getting traffic w/o depending on Google. I can think of two ways to get people to your affiliate links:
    1. Email List
    2. Create a viral document

    Do you have any other ideas or “marketing w/o Google’s help?”

    Aloha!
    Charlie
40. iwriteebooks

    Thanks very much for this post. I’ve heard quite a bit about this, but not really understood it too well.

    Personally I think it is a good thing. There is so much rubbish on the web that it is turning people away from what is really worth while and hitting legitimate businesses.

    I’m particularly thinking about all those awful spun articles which barely read sensibly. They are not valuable content by any stretch of the imagination and I think it will soon be that all content farms will be forced to demand original articles if they wish to maintain Google ranking.

    The sooner this happens the better both for suppliers and consumers as it will hopefully spell the end of the get rich quick cowboys who are the authors of most spam epidemics.

    —

    Reply:

    I agree. However, the internet and Google in particular, are VERY powerful platforms. As long as they remain powerful, there will be junk.

    There is a lot of junk on TV, too…. but it’s good to keep in mind that one person’s “junk” TV program can be many others TiVo obsession!

    Same for online. I’ve searched for a specific answer before and FOUND it on a page that wasn’t so well-written or well-presented…but I FOUND it. Regardless of how pretty it was, Google did their job for me.

    Thanks for stopping by!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
41. Jhoe@RealtorsColumbia

    A nice bit of hard work done on your part to provide us this information.

    I was shocked that Ezine articles had that much info on those 7 subjects and I’m surprised that they had not already taken steps to curtail it. I know the 7 subjects you picked are probably not the exact ones that Google is probably after, but you’re certainly in the ball park if you consider the figures that you presented.

    Thanks,
    Jhoe
42. Kate

    Nice Research Jennifer. Some of my observations on this algorithm update –

    1. Adsense heavy sites are badly hit
    2. Sites with poor usability are also hit to some extent.
    3. Spun content sites are completely down(which is good thing).

    These are some of my observations and i know there are many other things going on as well. I was thinking if this update is going to stay then do i need to remove my content from squidoo, hubpages or other revenue sharing sites ?
43. Wayne Jordan

    When in doubt, follow the money. Low quality sites and/or content do not provide clicks and income for Google. They cleaned up the “mess” not to improve the user experience, but to clear the way for content that will make them more money.

    I’m, OK with that, because hopefully some of the better placements will be my content.

    —
    Reply:

    Hey Wayne =)

    Above all, Google is a business – so everything they do should somehow come back to that bottom line. However, I don’t think this algo change was an action DIRECTLY for money. I think it WAS more of a move to protect their primary product- their search index. When they protect and improve that, all else falls into place.

    However, as with all big companies, when they are amazing you with action their left hand is taking, you might be wise to keep an eye on their RIGHT hand to see what else is going on 😉 Ya never know what could happen next…lol!

    Thanks for reading!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
44. Pavol

    There’s so much speculation about this update… Granted, you did not do all in-depth research, but what you presented was by far the best analysis I have read yet. Thank you for that!

    My take on this, in addition to your own analysis, is that it may not even be the topics themselves, but due to the saturation of those topics, the articles simply sound like a duplicate content. There is only so much that can be written about something before it all starts to sound the same.

    Another thing to consider is where those articles link to. If you write about penis enlargement, then most likely your resource box will link to the site about – penis enlargement. And these are not topics Google likes, thus those links on Ezine linking to sites like these are hurting Ezine. Plus, there are probably a lot of inbound links to articles on Ezine from sites with this type of content, which I would imagine is not adding to credibility either.

    And of course, Ezine is basically an adsense farm. Every article is completely surrounded with adsense, and like you said, that is a no-no for average user.

    And why Hubpages? Maybe Google does not want to give us the impression that it is safe to post junk on Google’s own properties, thinking Google will never go against their own content. (I know, that’s a conspiracy theory more than SEO theory 😉

    And what will EZA do? Or should do? Hard to tell, but I assume they will increase the requirement for minimum length of the article; will not accept articles posted elsewhere (in other words, you will need to post to EZA first, then on your site) to avoid publishing ‘scrapped content’; eliminate some niches and keywords; and decrease the number of ads and its presentation. Well, just a theory 🙂

    Reply:
    ——–
    You’re right, Pavol – there really is only so much that can be said about one keyword. It can be challenging to find a unique spin and voice for it, can’t it?

    Thanks for stopping by!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
45. Rob Robillard

    Hi Jennifer,
    You definitely have some interesting results, here. I tend to disagree, however, with your assessment of HubPages, regarding the nofollow attribute. I haven’t had to work my tail off to keep my scores in the dofollow range, and I suspect you would hear the same from most hubbers. The threshold to gain dofollow status is actually quite low. In fact, it only takes a hub score of 40, and an author score of 75.

    I’ve been there for just over 3 years and only published 66 hubs, but my scores are consistently between 94-100, so it’s actually fairly easy.

    I think as the site has grown, it has become much more difficult for admin to keep up with the amount of dupe content and spam being published, and that may have played a larger role in the traffic tanking.

    Reply:
    ———-

    Rob, thank you for clarifying the author score guidelines! (and that it doesn’t take a ‘tail workout’ to achieve them). I absolutely understand WHY HubPages has those rules in place, too.

    Thanks again!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
46. Dusan

    Interesting. Did your head explode a couple of times?

    Google’s a hypocrite, though. If you click on an acai berry article on ezinearticles.com, you do get a bunch of acai berry ads from Google. But yes, thousands of articles on acai berry a month – you just can’t have that many interesting, useful takes.

    Reply:
    ———

    Yes, Dusan, my head DID explode a couple of times! hahahaha! Ya know, I don’t think the issue is that Google doesn’t “like” these topics at ALL. I think it is more about those topics being top-offenders for junk content AND the sheer VOLUME of that junk content that they have to deal with. Whatcha think?

    Thanks!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
47. Vicky

    Thank you Jennifer!!

    Great post, it totally makes sense.

    I think that EZA have been trying to improve the content on their site for a while, but it would not surprise me if they take it as far as SQ did…

    Thanks for putting it together,
    Vicky
48. Annie Wieg

    Jennifer,
    Your analysis is spot on. I did a rudimentary analysis last Saturday that was based on a similar hypothesis, but you really drove this home. The results are staggering. I am stunned at the % of pages on the “7 Subjects.” This shows how the heap may sort itself out. Particularly the Squidoo piece. As hard as the Squidoo changes were a couple of years ago for some of us, I think they could wind up being the beneficiary of all these changes. You’re right; this is not over. And I agree; this is a business decision that could make us all say “ouch” for a short time, but is needed to save the sites long term. Great work.
49. Clive Anderson

    Hi Jen,

    Nice work, I am more than impressed with your investigative skills and more-so the results.

    I’m pretty much of the exact same opinion here as you and think EzineArticles are going to have to man-up at some point in order to move forward for the long term.

    For the interim I may take a long hard look into the eHow.com policies, only in so much that it would appear that they are high up in Googles estimations right now and entries there would possibly prove to be quite fruitful at this moment.

    Thank you for sharing you findings on this subject, it has certainly given me food for thought while I carry out my own, but I do feel you have 100% hit the nail on the head.

    Warm Regards,

    Clive Anderson 🙂

    —-
    Reply:

    Hey Clive!! Thanks for adding to the conversation!

    In a comment down below this, I am pretty sure someone gave more insight into the policies for eHow. A year plus or so ago, I did some writing there to get a feel for the platform. I know they have done thru some major changes since then.

    Thanks!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
50. Master Dayton

    I definitely think you’re on to something here, although based on a lot of what I’m reading I do think some sites did just get “general authority slaps” with a few pages being strong enough to weather it. HubPages would be my prime example on that. eHow is baffling to me, although I guess no one has said how LiveStrong and other sites owned by DS have done, and I can’t help thinking that the “Resources” section gave them a trustworthiness that many other sites don’t have, because otherwise you would have expected some pages at least to get hit. Great post – appreciate the research.
51. Shawn

    Thanks for the great update.

    Really new to all this, wondering how this is going to affect back links. We are trying to provide valuable info for a brcik and mortor business, should we just post in our blog, or summit to article directories also for links back to website?

    —
    Reply:

    Hey Shawn, great question! And Local marketing is a big thing for me and our students over at Power3Marketing.com – so this is a topic we’ve had much conversation about over in that forum.

    Be sure all you do online ends up back to YOUR brick and mortar site. If you are using these other sites more for the backlink than for direct traffic or rankings, all should be fine. Be sure to follow the rules of these other sites and give them what they want – and they will be more likely to give you what YOU want. It’s a win/win when we all work together =)

    Thanks!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
52. Jim McClinsey

    This makes me wonder if there isn’t an opportunity for someone to come up with a template for a new style of site that caters to algo changes quickly and easily.

    I say someone because it won’t be me lol.
53. Bill (LoneWolf) Nickerson

    Jen, you’ve done some excellent analysis here that makes lots of sense. Obviously, Chris and the rest at EZA have been finding similar results.

    I was impressed with their openness about this process and I hope that they figure out what they can do to best continue serving the community in a way that doesn’t kill their bottom line.

    I was very concerned that you found over 10% of the content had those keywords. The concern that I have with EZA is the seeming failure of the editorial process. Much of that content (and the other 90% as well) should have been rejected based on the quality of the writing alone.

    I believe that they need to have fewer articles across the board and work very hard to ensure that they are the quality articles that readers and publishers are looking for.

    Eliminating those niches may help, but it could be overkill. The sheer effort involved could make tightening the editorial controls economically difficult. I’m sure that there is valuable content in this niches that will be lost. The spammers get to ruin it for everyone again.

    I haven’t checked to see what HubPages or AritclesBase are doing in response to this yet but I’m sure they’re working on something to deal with this. It will be interesting to see what shakes out.

    Keep up the great work Jen!
54. Laura

    I am not in any of those niches mentioned so I haven’t seen a drop in traffic or rankings. In fact, all of my articles on ezines are doing better than before the algo change.
55. Onefineham

    Jennifer-

    You always have great content to contribute, but this time you have WAY outdone yourself for sharing.

    I know others will read this and say, “Wow that’s amazing info – now I know not to write on these topics, etc.” but I look at it and say, “D***! I just really learned some amazing new ways to do research!”

    Hope this finds you well as always,
    Barry (a.k.a. Onefineham)

    PS. I posted a link about a post I wrote about the recent changes Ezine has made regarding new content submission.
56. MJ

    Jenniffer

    Is major algorithm change going to take awhile to manifest on the search engines yes? no?
57. caretakerray

    Jennifer:
    I think you are on to somthing here! Even if this is not the whole story it appears to be a good part of it. Weather or not this is the answer, it looks like it will help. Thanx for doing the research, i think it will be very helpful (as is most all of your advice).
    caretakerray
58. Magssno

    Hi Jennifer,
    Thanks for this great post.
    The muddy waters of Google are now much clearer.

    I have a lot of stuff on Ezine Articles and one of the others, – fortunately none of it it any of the niches you mention so, I guess it is a case of wait and see.

    Certainly over the last few weeks some of my stuff which was relatively stable on page 1 rank 1 of Google had been up and down like a fiddlers elbow!
59. Karen Y Larkin

    Hi Jennifer,

    Excellent insights, once again! Two points came to mind as I read your post.

    1. I watched my own sites when the algo shifted and the ones that lost ground were, in truth, pretty junky. Others went up in rankings–substantially.

    2. I’ve written about 150 articles for eHow and receive ongoing royalties from some of them. They have done some things over the past few years that I think may shed light on why they are ranking better.

    A. In the beginning I wrote just for eHow, and almost anyone could publish almost anything–regardless of quality.
60. chad

    Do you think this will affect backlinking strategies in regards to “content farms” – UAW in particular? If you are getting links from these sites that got hit, theoretically the links are of even less quality.

    Reply:
    —-

    Hiya Chad =) Wow that’s a whole ‘nother novel-length post to answer that! hahaha! Let’s see if I can answer in a brief way (tho we all know brevity is NOT my specialty!)

    When in doubt about your backlinking process, TEST IT and see how it is holding up. Also, you have to ask yourself if you care about rankings – traffic- backlinks…or ALL 3 from your process and adjust accordingly. I have yet to see any indication that any of these “hit” sites have lost back link power…I’ve only see Google ranking losses (and those 2 things do not necessarily go together, ok?).

    Thanks for the question!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
61. Stephanie

    That’s some very interesting data. I’m glad I haven’t been in of those niches. I guess that’s one way to see the difference between a crowded niche and an oversaturated niche.
62. Karen Y Larkin

    Hi Jennifer,

    Excellent insights, once again! Two points came to mind as I read your post.

    1. I watched my own sites carefully when the algo shifted, and the ones that lost ground were, in truth, pretty junky. Others (that you taught me how to build through P3 Elite) went up in rankings–substantially.

    2. I’ve written about 150 articles for eHow and may be able to shed light on why they are ranking better.

    A. When I started with eHow almost anyone could publish almost anything–regardless of quality. If the content got traffic, the writer was paid a portion of the revenue share.

    B. Then I started writing for Demand Studios as well as eHow, and eHow bought a lot of my content t DS. Quality standards were tighter, and writers were paid either on a per article basis or from revenue share.
    C. Then eHow contracted with DS for all its content and stopped allowing writers to contribute directly to the eHow site. Quality controls tightened further, and content matter came under scrutiny. Previous eHow contributors had to apply to and be approved by DS in order to continue working for eHow.
    D. In the past year quality bar at DS has continued to rise, and they have kept very tight reigns on what content is and isn’t allowed.
63. kevin

    Great reverse engineering on EZA, Jennifer. To expand on this I think there is a general pattern that Google applied.

    This was my guess on the situation: Google focused on a chunk (11% it turns out) of suspect queries (probably spammy terms) and did analysis on original content and the top hosts of the ‘offending’ non-original content and applied some severe filtering.

    I guess they picked some terms with high cpc and a large boost in amount of recent content appearing in the index. Like we use copyscape, Google obviously is capable of the same. By looking at the top offenders of hosts that have lots of content related to these terms, google decided that original content was more important and PROBABLY also decided that INTENT was important.

    EZA exists with the INTENT to promote. – it may appear that it is ALMOST as bad as buying links.

    Watch out as UGC (user generated content) sites that allow duplicate keyword stuffed (unnatural) content & user specified backlinks will probably be tougher to rank in going forward. Just a thought.

    By the way, Sistrix had tested significantly MORE than 7 keywords against EZA. They lost completely 71% of those keywords from the index altogether and the remaining 30% took a dive in rankings.

    Let that sit for a minute and think about the after affects. I think EZA is looking at the top 7 categories of crud that we all can agree are crud and seeing the bigger picture of how do we handle it.

    They won’t be as effective if they can’t have duplicate content for everyone and limited all their keywords to 10 pages only, – but they SHOULD for their own benefit.

    Reply
    ——

    Hey Kevin! long time, no talk! Nice to see you!

    Yep, this sure is a mess, isn’t it – and that Sistrix data is darn scary. This is one of those times that will get worse before it gets better – and major adjustments and rule changes are sure to be hitting our inboxes from respective sites.

    However, I think it will blow over. The sites that got hit got a big slap on the wrist from Google with them saying “Stop it!” (ie, Stop clogging my index with all that!”) If they listen, it’s possible things could improve quickly. But who really knows? No one.

    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
64. Greg

    Hey PPG,

    Nice research. It’s my first time here and if this is what you do all the time, well, cool. 🙂

    On EZA & Such: I don’t think google can read, not really, and it would probably take too much computing power to tie a grammar reference into every page it analyzes. I do think that it can do “some” readability analysis, but not like a human.

    The point is that I don’t think articles are necessarily downgraded for writing quality. I think the same is true for well-spun articles.

    I don’t think it’s necessarily duplicate content, either. Grab a 15 word chunk from some PLR article and google it (with quotes) and you might find 1,000 copies.

    What I think, and what seems to be along the lines of your thoughts, is that G looks for definitions of “junk sites” that can be “easily” defined coded into their system. (Easy for the Google team is a little different than easy for me!) Put a lot of poorly spun articles on your site, or articles that have each been used a thousand times, and you might just get a hit. I think that, in addition to the spammy stuff, a fair amount of EZA content is recycled (and carefully spun,) before it’s posted. G might be able to pick up on that. I don’t envy the jobs their editors have. A blanket “you can’t post on that topic, here” automated policy, like Squidoo’s, might be a good idea.

    A post on SEObook mentioned a certain amount of anarchy in the google coding labs. So if you create a definition of “junk sites” and your somewhat anarchic programmers add their own tweaks you might get interesting results. Add to the definitions certain spammy terms, like the ones you mentioned, and we’ll see results like the ones we’re seeing. I also don’t think it’s impossible for G programmers to be giving a small artificial boost to their favorite sites/niches.

    It seems to me that Google does this with every big update. A whole slew of sites are kicked out, a few rise up, and then G analyzes the results. The algorithm is then tweaked over the next few weeks and things settle down.

    Here’s that seobook post: http://www.seobook.com/google-kills-ehows-competitors
65. kevin

    @Karen.

    Very interesting to hear your experience with eHow and demand. I am slightly familiar with the model as I ‘know’ people close to demand, ( worked closely with previous employees, & the engineers on some of their top properties).

    I (like many people) think eHow is crud content. DS content is pretty bad in general whether video or text. They are the epitome of content farm IMO.

    But I believe (knowing their keyword farm system) that they LIMIT the # of articles on keywords and are always moving and keeping current. They buy search data and target rising trends to get on top quickly. I will leave it at that, but it is exciting to see the comments of someone who knows some of the ‘inside’ scoop on DS/eHow.
66. Mark

    Jennifer:

    Great work. Thanks for taking the time to do this. It fits in with your philosophy of helping others will lead to more success for your business and it is appreciated. Any advice on how to target the changes is much appreciated.
67. Karen Y Larkin

    Hi Jennifer,

    Excellent insights, once again! Two points came to mind as I read your post.

    1. I watched my own sites carefully when the algo shifted, and the ones that lost ground were, in truth, pretty junky. Other sites (that you taught me how to build through P3 Elite) went up in the rankings–substantially.

    2. I’ve written about 150 articles for eHow and may be able to shed light on why the site continues to rank well. The short version is quality control and topic scrutiny. Read on for the longer version.

    A. When I started writing for eHow almost anyone could publish almost anything–regardless of quality or topic. If the article got traffic, the writer was paid a portion of the revenue share.

    B. eHow would purchase some of its content from Demand Studios, in addition to publishing articles from their own contributors. I applied to DS and was approved to write for them. Quality standards were tighter, topics were more focused and pay was better. Essentially, DS would buy my articles and sell them to eHow.

    C. Next, eHow contracted with DS for all eHow content and stopped accepting content directly from contributors. Those writers had to apply to and be approved by DS. A LOT of writers were weeded out.

    D. The quality bar at DS has continued to rise, and they have kept a tight reign on which topics are and are not allowed.

    As you have taught your students, DS gives Google what Google wants. The content is unique, informative, contains no affiliate links, and cites reputable resources for facts.

    This is NOT a DS promo on any level. Most of my writing goes into my P3 business these days.

    Karen

    Reply:
    ————–

    Hey Karen! No problem on the comment duplication thing… them internet gremlins are a pain at times…lol!

    Thank you for you insight into eHow. I know they have gone thru some major changes, but wasn’t clear what they were. Thanks for clearing it up for us.

    And isn’t it nice being a P3’r lately? If anything, things are looking even better for us!

    Thanks for stopping by and adding info we didn’t have!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
68. Karen Y Larkin

    Yikes! I so didn’t mean to post this 3 times! Sorry.

    My computer went goofy while I was typing the post, and I didn’t realize it was submitting.
69. sonni

    Thanks for the research sounds like you did your homework. I noticed you left Suite 101 out of your list and that is the one that I believe got hit hard even though they have quality content. I don’t get why G would punish a site like 101 and let eHow go untouched when eHow has 98% junk.

    I do not write for 101, but I do have 400 articles on eHow. If G is so concerned about quality then this doesn’t make sense, so I don’t buy it. The real reasons are greed, power and control. My 2 cents.

    —-
    Reply:

    Hey Sonni =)

    I’m not all that familiar with Suite101 so chose not to include it in this post. If anyone has some insight into why Suite101 got nailed, please share!

    Thanks!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
70. kevin

    @sonni

    I don’t think so. I think it is a ratio of content related to junk topics. I don’t think google took quality of content into consideration as much as quality of keyword space on a site. ehow I don’t think CLOBBERS the same spammy keywords over and over. They just publish lots of crappy content on *somewhat unique keywords. I wouldn’t count eHow safe for long though. Google Chrome’s site block filter will come into play in a future upgrade, I am betting.
71. Vicki Lehmann

    Jen:

    Thank you for your time and hard work. I have been looking for analysis/opinions regarding this algo change. Your analysis is the most indepth I’ve read and definitely points to what may be the real issue here. I think you are on to something. It’s always scarey when the term “duplicate content” is used in an algo change since a lot of us are using plr to add content to our blogs.

    Thanks again, Jen, for your hard work and commitment to providing quality to your subscribers.

    Vicki Lehmann

    Reply
    ——-

    Hey Vicki!

    The true/original meaning of ‘duplicate content’ is same content that is found on the SAME SITE. That is something I also feel is playing a part in all this. For example, I’ve noticed that Ezine Articles has (or did have) an print-friendly page of an article as well as the actual online article…this could possibly create duplicate content issues on their site for them since it is 2 pages of the exact same content. Make sense?

    Thanks for stopping by!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
72. Jessie Maybelline

    Jennifer-
    This is one of the most insightful and well thought out posts yet. I have a some articles on Ezinearticles but they have none of the 7 keywords and they seem to be ok for now. In fact none of my niche websites are in any of those categories. I do have an ad on one of my new sites about “getting the ex” back and it is indexed but having a hard time getting any rank at the moment. I wonder if this is a coincidence? Probably.
    Again, your insight on this topic was great and is the best that I have read so far!

    Jessie
73. Chris K.

    Those are some very interesting ideas. Here’s one thing to throw in the mix. When you consider all of the sites (the ones you mentioned and all of the ones that have been mentioned by Sistrix and SearchMetrics), all of these sites runs AdSense.

    I personally checked this list (and skipped some because I already knew they ran AdSense):

    trails.com
    merchantcircle.com
    freedownloadscenter.com
    associatedcontent.com
    americantowns.com
    business.com (to a very small extent)
    mahalo.com
    examiner.com
    tradekey.com
    helium.com
    blippr.com
    lovetoknow.com

    Now I’m not saying it necessarily has anything to do with AdSense (such as placement), but consider how AdSense works. It’s a semantic technology that attempts to determine what a page is about, and then it tries to match up that content with relevant advertising.

    So essentially each of these websites are giving Google a direct line into reading their site content. Seems like it would be a lot easier for Google to utilize this data than it would be to try to scale out such a program from their organic index, with its billions of pages and hundreds of millions of domains.

    Now here’s where it gets kind of interesting … what kind of content could trails.com possibly be publishing that Google wouldn’t like? Well, nothing intentionally. But it’s got a couple ten thousand of pages about casinos, a few about viagra, and a few mentions of porn, for good measure.

    Or what about americantowns.com? Lots of pages about viagra (including “Viagra Falls” lol), obviously casinos, and it also has a surprisingly large number of news articles about porn, too.

    And they all mention most of the subjects you’ve outlined here to some extent or another (acai berry, tv to pc, etc.). I don’t think that this alone is “enough,” but it’s an algorithm … So you start here, throw in things you mentioned like the rate at which the site creates pages and so on, and maybe you’ve got something.
74. Isobel

    Fantastic analysis, Jennifer – thank you, that was a ton of work!

    eHow is actually very different from the other sites because most of its new content is made up of paid articles that are copy-edited in-house, using AP style and with citations and references. It’s still going through and getting rid of low-quality user-generated stuff, and the revenue share articles it allows now are copy-edited and written to the new higher standards.
75. http://www.xbox360kinectdeals.com

    Jennifer,

    That was some really in depth research. I have been poking around as well to see how this latest update has affected Ezine Articles specifically.

    I started wondering just how bad it was so, what I did was grab an article directly from Ezines site that had been published last summer, and posted it to my website. Of course I included the author links. I did zero back linking to this page just put it up there.

    Now this was a very uncompetitive phrase and rather long tail.

    Let me just say that the Google update has been brutal on Ezine Articles.

    This article should be ranking at the top of the search. But once I posted it on my site it ranked within 30min at number three with no other input other than just posting it.

    Why in the world would this make any sense at all. 1. This is not my content.
    2. It’s clearly duplicate.
    3. It’s brand new.
    4. The original is aged and sitting on a PR 6 site.

    Something is wrong with this picture.
    Google has been very good to Ezine Articles over the years I hope they come back into favor with them.

    Thanks for your research,
    Alan

    —-
    Reply:

    Hey Alan – thanks for your insight. This is something that we have talked a lot about over at Power3Marketing – it’s something else, isn’t it?

    Thanks!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
76. Anna

    Very interesting article, and congratulation for your research and analysis.

    Keep up the good work, with respect Anna
77. Wandah

    Being relatively new to this whole scenario . I found this very interesting.

    It is great for people who are new to the internet marketing business to get off on the right foot when it comes to doing business that is backed with value and information that is truly a helpful resource to people.

    The business of selling to consumers is only going to grow in leaps and bounds in the months and years ahead.

    Getting it right is important.
78. Dr. Tim

    The question that pops into my mind is, “WHAT DOES GOOGLE WANT?” Simply… they want the best search results for the person doing the search. I find it difficult to believe that 10% of the search population is looking for penis enlargement or want to get their ex back (you get my point). If I’m selling one of these products then I darned well better do it in a clear, helpful and informative way. Maybe article marketing will not be the best method of marketing those products in the future. Maybe a lot of things… but, as with all change, it’s probably best to just sit back awhile and see what sifts out.

    Jenn, this was clear, concise and delightful (as usual with your info). As we say up Nort… you’re a hoot! Thanks.

    Reply
    ———-

    Hey Dr Tim =)

    yep, this is totally something we’re gonna have to put our ‘watch and see’ hats on for. It’s bound to get even more interesting!

    THANK YOU!!!!
    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
79. Eunice Riemer

    I think Google meant exactly what it said–the site wants to weed out those hundreds, if not thousands, of silly, useless “articles” that are written around keywords with no other goal than to gain ranking on Google, The advice of so-called experts to churn out a lot of these bits of fluff in order to sell products is a blight on the Internet. I applaud Google for writing an algorhythm that will sink them to the bottom of the ratings where they belong.
80. Mike

    Internet marketing is discouraging…I have been struggling for over two years to make money online, and when it seems like things are starting to make sense then there is some big change that messes me all up.

    I used to use Squidoo a lot but after their big policy change almost all of my lenses were deleted…and many of them were NOT on the list of “not allowed” topics. I have tried making other new lenses but they are apparently not allowed either, even though there is nothing on Squidoo saying that topic is not allowed. The worst part is that every time I have tried to contact Squidoo, they just ignore me. So I am officially done with Squidoo.

    Ezinearticles has really been a pain lately too, and my articles are becoming less effective, and taking a lot longer to get approved.

    I have online friends who have been using Ehow for a while, but claim that the moderators there will steal users’ content and use it as their own, basically stealing from them and profiting from it.

    It seems to be getting tougher to make money online every day. I am debating getting that local P3Marketing course you did…is local online marketing a good option still?

    *end rant*
81. hagar

    read this last night, and congrats… a marvelous piece of research, and shows the problem clearly!
    good job!
    was thinking about the ezine thing (they’re closed that thread, btw) and a thought occurs to me… they don’t want to go into “censorship”, but the crap is killing them in search.. so run a scan in those seven areas, and any article that hasn’t been viewed in say, two years? dump it into an archive… which is accessible ONLY inside ezine. the whole purpose of an ezine article is to be read…and if its not being read, don’t trash it…. just put it where it can’t skew their search numbers. seems like that might solve the problem. no views=archive. View=comes back for two year, then goes to sleep again.
    Too simple?
82. David C

    It’s never pretty when you are in the loosing money side.
    However, overall I agree with Google’s changes, most of the forbidden niches are made to scam people anyway.

    I think about it this way, if I walk down the street to my 7-11 or convenient store or are just looking for a restaurant, would I want people driving by my side, yelling offers, or snake oil man type of people walking on the side walk peddling their wares?

    Would I encourage the government and authorities to do something about it? YES! and so would you.

    For the people who create quality content and good services, Google will most time be a friend.

    I am however a bit weary as to how our ezine strategies will work from now on
83. PotPieGirl

    Amazing feedback and insight y’all – thank you SO much!

    I tried to respond to a lot of comments and questions IN their respective comment box so scroll up to see if I answered you. If not, let me know and I’ll try again!

    Great conversation!

    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
84. Dr. Tim

    @Mike
    I can assure you, from personal experience, that Jennifer and David’s P3Marketing course is great and still in need! If you’re in a large metro area with other P3 marketers about – no problem – there’s lots of need. If you’re in a small rural area you have two advantages: 1) you probably know most of your potential clients already, and 2) the need is even greater. Go for it!
85. PotPieGirl

    Quick note y’all….. I had a BUNCH of really good comments get trapped by my spam program. Why? no clue…lol!

    Anyway, they are now posted.

    Please accept my apologies!

    Jennifer
    ~PotPieGirl
86. Dianne

    Really appreciate this Jennifer! I struggle ongoing as it is to keep my content quality high. I spend 6-8 hrs every couple of weeks to get my stolen content taken off auto-blogs. Happy to think the blog scraping might be diminished. I’ve noticed when I search my keywords that now my own sites come up higher for them, whereas before an EZ article would be higher on the page. OK with me! Thanks for the analysis!
87. Winst

    I am glad I followed your advice and kept on with squidoo.Actually now most of my articles are posted in squidoo in the form of a lens than e zine I most say.

    You are like my internet body guard preventing me from danger Thanks this post is also guarding me Thanks for taking care of your internet marketing children
88. Ron Passfield

    Hi Jennifer – very informative post – you have provided an excellent model of what Google says it wants:
    “better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis”. Well, you certainly provide all these elements. I think the changes reinforce the real value of original content. I also think that quality blogging will experience a resurgence through these Google changes. Thanks.
89. Doc Sheldon

    Jennifer, given that it’s impossible to isolate all the variables, I think you did a hell of a job of breaking this down for us. I imagine your head DOES hurt… had to take a lot of time and effort to put this case together.

    You make a convincing argument. Nice job!
90. Blake

    This was very interesting, and fun (if anything about Panda can be called “fun”) to read. But what about Suite 101? Their articles seem to be high-quality with none of the spam markers of the “bad” sites, and they got nailed – not to mention specifically called out by Matt Cutts, which seems odd.
91. Naazir

    This is an interesting take on this, but I do think there is more to it. They said they were looking for higher content and they want to return high quality content to the users. If this is truely the case, the eHow would have gotten hit like the others.

    I wrote this before the so call algorithm changes. But I think there is a lot more to it that Google is saying because their explanation of why they instituted the algorithm changes and the results in the search engines at present, don’t add up.

    http://www.infobarrel.com/Online_Content_That_Helps_Readers_At_Risk_of_Being_UnfairlyTargeted_As_Spam_By_The_Search_Engines
92. Michael

    Well I must say that you have done what others probably thought about yet.

    I am glad for what you present here Jen and always love to get your post in my inbox.

    Personally, Ezine should do what other sites have done to control quality. Ban the junk!

    Ban the software written crap and topics that don’t really help anyone.

    I don’t feel bad for them because for tool long they acted like they were the only article sites around.

    Thats my take on things….

    It’s my birthday today ya’ll

    Michael
93. Doc Sheldon

    There has been a LOT of open discussion over at EZA, about their refocusing on considerably tighter quality standards. I suspect they’ll be fine, if they follow through.

    Although, I think it would serve Chris well to read Jennifer’s post, as it might change his approach somewhat.
94. Chris Katheman

    Yeah, my Hubpages got whacked over February, but the traffic has come back dramatically in the last few days. Odd.
95. Brandon McHale

    I already know that you’re absolutely right.

    It’s the amount of over saturated keywords on each article site that caused the initial action from Google.

    However, I don’t think it’s the keyword terms, as much as the saturation within the sites. I’m not talking about duplicate content.

    I’ll have to test some “over saturated” terms on sites that carry little to no information on them about those topics.

    Great read as usual PPG
    Thank you.
96. Zeek

    “Another fine mess we got ourselves into”.

    Google has hinted that they want pages with more content. A few of the well known SEO experts are throwing around the numbers of 800 – 1000 words per page. if that is the case, EZA might need to consider removing all articles under 800 words (or whatever figure they want). OR, maybe they could post 2 or 3 articles per page to get the content numbers up. Google looks at the article page the same way as a page on your site. How many pages do you have with 275 words or so? And with Adsense on it? Not many I bet and neither can EZA. But then that begs the question what about sites like eHow?

    There are many topics/niches that you cannot stretch out to 500 or 800 words without putting in a lot of useless filler. Its like you telling me that you are going to ask me what time it is, and I have to spend 5 minutes in telling you. I just can’t tell you its 10am. What I would have to do is start out by telling you who invented the first watch, where it was invented, what color it was etc. There are tons of articles out there like this.

    I just spent about 20 minutes going to EZA and pretending I was a normal person looking for information as opposed to being a marketer. I randomly picked a topic in the Home Improvement category. 30 results came back on the page. 16 out of 30 articles were written by 3 authors.

    Out of those 16, only 2 might contain useful content and should be published IMHO. One was over 500 words and the other about 270. The remaining 14 had some really stupid stuff like “The first thing you need to do is clean the xxx. Because if you don’t clean the xxx it will be dirty.” There were a lot of other profound statements like that in the other articles but I can’t quote them without giving the author away. My point being that there are indeed good 300 word articles out there. Not in that batch but I’m sure there are somewhere.:))

    My comment on considering posting more than one article per page also has the additional benefit of providing a few outbound links on each page. Google does like this if they are follow links. I’ve always considered that as just a good SEO practice. Not trying to get your fur up there chris:))
97. Zeek

    Hey Ms PotPieGirl,

    Can you remove my previous post. It was intended for a different blog:))
98. Jason

    I wonder about the ad saturation percentages. HubPages has a lot of very short poetry, but still has a lot of ads on each page. It would not surprise me if the percentage of ads on a page compared to the number of words in text, etc is a factor.

    That might help explain why some sites got hit hard that look spammy – almost like the article written is for the purpose of attracting people to the ads on that page. Conversely, if there is a better ratio with more text and less ads, it may appear more authoritative.
99. Catriona

    Thanks a million Jennifer. You are not only the meat and potatoes … you are the bees knees! That was a lot of work and I really appreciate it
100. nette

     Thank you again for the millionth time, Jennifer!

     You always explain complex stuff in a language everyone can understand. Thank you for taking the time and effort to help your fellow IMers.
101. Amudhan

     As a new comer to computers, internet and online marketing, i was wondering what this Google algorithm change. This post helped me to get a good understanding about this algorithm change. i f some reasonably priced video tutorial or some gujdes is published regarding this subject than it will be a great help to new comers like me
102. Adrienne Jenkins

     Thanks for this detailed analysis. Suggestion For a PT-II Post. Wondering how the Paid Content Article Directories like Associated Content/Yahoo, Demand Studios & The Examiner are affected?
103. H. Kiley

     Thank you for your insightful and informative post. I will implement some of your advice and will check back frequently for more direction.
104. TS Redmond Mize

     Hey Jen!
     This really is an excellent post and I think the point you made about it being “far from over” was an excellent one.

     There are a number of things that have indicated that those in “the know” recognize more is on the way. You mentioned eHow- and pretty much everyone and their dog was saying that one was going to go down. Then, it didn’t.
     However, you notice that shortly after this, Demand Media also purchased CoverItLive- they also partnered up with Rachel Ray. From a marketing perspective- that was extremely intelligent, and, had it not just so happened to coincide with all of these things- I wouldn’t have thought much about it.
     But it did.

     Rachel Ray may have just been the usual- Demand’s got a few pretty high profilers like that, actually. But CoverItLive? A blogging platform?
     To me, that smacks of them making needed improvements to foray a bit more deeply into social media. When we sort of eyeball all the press surrounding DM- it’s pretty clear that they want to grow, they want to ride the trends- they JUST went public, so naturally, they’re making moves that better that bottom line even more than before.

     My observation was that you’ve got quite a few people blogging a sort of triumph bit about the eHow thing- but completely missing the fact that Demand’s moving towards a different direction. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that we’re not the only ones who feel that this is far from over- someone at DM thinks so, too- thus, they’re taking the steps needed to avert a potential issue and continue to grow.
105. TS Redmond Mize

     Oh and also- this was something I’ve been mulling over. You look at that list- the “spam list”, but then think about the other niches where we typically see insane amounts of spam, grey to black hat stuff running all over- which list do you think we’ll see next?
     I’d lay money on “insurance” being in there- that seems to be one you see a great deal of the low quality content coming from.
106. Ann Bangkok

     If you look into the Squidoo banned topic list, you will find that all of them are either popular Clickbank products or products with large number of affiliates.
     In short both Squidoo and now google wants to avoid affiliate spam. Is this the best way to do it? I doubt. If Google appreciate affiliates who build sites with real good content, then half of this problem would be solved. Google’s over emphasis on backlinks is causing the webspam.
     -Ann
107. Dave Vance

     Congrats on the shout out in the WebProNews.com “Google “Panda” Algorithm Update – What’s Known & What’s Possible” article!
108. Dusan

     Yes, Jennifer, it’s about good vs bad content. And, of course, the problem is that a lot of people who’re good at and actually create good content know squat about SEO and vice versa.

     But they they seem to have a hard time figuring what’s good content and what’s bad content, it seems. Or the desire to mess with bad content that makes them money. Till the money making part suffers.

     This could have been taken care of when they slapped Squidoo back in 2009. And they could have slapped Squidoo a lot sooner. The reason was there a lot earlier.
109. Tony

     Interesting topic, I have to say, looks like some people are going to have to work at it.

     Though I do think 800 to 1,000 words is a bit extreme though.

     I remember I was at a dentists office in the mid 2000’s, reading a computer magazine about ticked off legitimate online merchants who were actually getting pushed LOWER in the search results, while the junky sites wound up above them.
110. Holly Cotter

     I’m impressed by how much investigating you did… and I think you’re definitely on to something. When you lay it out in your chart with percentages, it draws a pretty clear picture.

     Thank you for sharing your findings with us.
111. Rach72

     Have to laugh when you compare this to ‘Squid-gate’ back in ’09! I must be getting experienced (or old)!

     People who defend EZA and all the others seem to have completely missed the point. Yes there is some great content on these sites, but in general the information and overall reader experience is crap.

     My husband even bounces straight out of an EZA or HP site when it comes up because he hates reading them and gets no benefit from the stuff that he does read.

     Great job as usual Jennifer – Reckon that you might be onto something here.

     ( I would love to see the bounce rates on these sites too! – I’m pretty sure it would be fairly high)
112. Gerry

     Jennifer,

     Thanks for the most “reasoned” perspective on this that I have read. There is a lot of “ready,fire.aim” supposition floating around out there in the IM world and a lot of it is very subjective with little supporting data.

     Your analysis makes more sense than anything I have come across, and is my first exposure to your level of knowledge.

     And by the way I have a couple of undeveloped “weight loss” domains I won’t be needing!!
113. Scott

     Jennifer,

     Very interesting research that you did. It may not be scientific but I don’t see how anybody could really argue with your results. In my opinion EZ got a bit to cocky and I feel like they thought they were untouchable with Google. When you read there blog and see the responses from there staff it’s almost comical. It’s like they are totally shell-shocked and don’t know what to do next!

     I have submitted many articles to them and thanks to them have some stuff ranked on page one. They really have gotten laxed on what they will let through though. They say they have tough standards and then they hold 100 articles contest. It seems like they are talking out of both sides of there mouth these days.

     Scott
114. Diamond Gold Hoop Earrings Gary

     FWIW, it really surprises me that none of the banned niches are “Internet Marketing” related. I have not done specific research but if you do a search for “internet marketing, make money online,home business” type niches, you’re going to come up with an awfully lot of articles, many of them rehashes of the same old themes. So, why aren’t these niches targeted? I’m guessing because that’s what it’s ALL about and this subject is the sacred cow. Somehow that has no flavor of fairness either.
115. SimeyC

     I’ve done a lot of sould searching over the last few days, especially when I saw a dip of up to 50% of traffic to my articles (mostly on Hubpages). I know I produce quality articles (most of the time) and I know that overall Hubpages has a lot of quality authors so I had to believe that things would work out.

     My traffic has come back and I am only about 10% down so my belief in Google’s statement that they want quality search results means that quality content will float to the top is juistified.

     I have tweaked my content, and I have started to think about the presentation, especially the placement of Ads on my Hubs, but to be honest I’m not totally in panic mode and I fully expect to see Hubpages emerge at the top of the pile.

     I’ll be interested to see if Google’s algorithm really does produce quality search results – if it does, then the platform should not matter -the content should!

     Thanks for the thought provoking article!
116. Greekgeek

     Jennifer,

     Thanks for the numbers. We had come to some of the same conclusions, so of course I like them! I wrote a long post on my own Squidbits blog about why on earth Hubpages had gotten the shaft relative to Squidoo, and had guessed it must have something to do with Hubpages’ links, because it was the only huge difference I could see between the two sites. We don’t have any proof, but it’s the only logical explanation I’ve seen offered so far.

     I had guessed anti-spam methods were a major factor, but hadn’t done the numbers on specific phrases to prove it. Your number crunching definitely fits my suspicions, and the results for eHow are very illuminating.

     Not proof, because it could be some other factor we haven’t thought of, but at least it’s plausible. In which case, hooray for Google for cracking down on the spam topics! I am afraid I am fairly ruthless with the Report button on Squidoo when I hit a Squiddont topic… I’m mean, but I honestly didn’t want to be publishing MY content on a site which had tons of junk on acai berries and penis enlargement…. who on earth would take my stuff seriously?!

     One other thing I believe may be relevant: Squidoo’s Categories hierarchy, totally rearranged last December, has established a relevant set of cross-links that reinforce top ranking lenses in each sub-subtopic by giving them one, two, or 3 links that are only a click or 3 away from Squidoo.com. And then we’ve got angels assigned to prowl the subtopics and watch for pure junk. If Google’s crawling its way down from the top of Squidoo.com, it sees all of Squidoo’s best “neighborhoods” first. Each and every category has a Top 100 page attached to it — even the sub-subtopics — which means lots of relevant cross-links for the better lenses on each subject, and far LESS link juice for the ones that don’t make those lists. It is still possible for some junky lenses to climb the lensrank ladder and get in the “best of” lists for some obscure subtopic without much competition, but I think this new hierarchy at once gave many lenses more visibility, by providing more ways for search engines to drill down to them, while obscuring others that were not so good. And of course, if the spammers didn’t come back to recategorize their lenses, they’re missing out on subtopic and subsubtopic cross-links, which more actively curated lenses have!

     Of course, most sites have some kind of logical category tree, and I again wonder about poor Hubpages (which I don’t use, but I ought to). I really think Hubpages needs to test loosening up the nofollow rules… maybe without even telling people, so they can just see whether or not that’s what’s giving them trouble.
117. Internet Marketing Blog

     Nice piece of research, no doubt this plays a huge role in Google’s decision.

     I found it a little ironic that EZA is still debating whether to allow a tiny amount of those kinds of articles, instead of simply weeding them all out.

     G.
118. Duncan

     Some very good points here< for me it been kind of like living through a nuclear war, everything was going swimmingly and then boooooooomm ground zero.

     ezine and the other "content farms" got well and truly toasted I am sure anyone looking into the Farmer update has seen the top 25 losers but I am sure there are more than just the top 25 sites that have lost , I not even considering the small sites who seo campaigns have also been downgraded as a result of this, are there any articles sites that allow do follow links that have survived

     The ezine blog about the farmer change is worth a read.
119. Guardian

     Thank you for your detailed analysis. Interesting what Earring Gary said about the IM niche.

     I wonder whether Google’s adsense revenue will be affected by this short term (though I expect long term, these changes are needed to maintain their market share of the SE market)

     I am glad this shoe dropped, at least now we know where we stand.
120. George Balibrera

     I just love the way you do things. I began to be an internet marketer about a year ago, but I did it all wrong. Now, I’m starting over from zero, but your posts have helped me a lot to be focused on the way things should be done. I just have a small feedback for you and please correct me if I am wrong.

     On your the steps to make money using streetarticles.com, you sugest to give some juice to those articles by bookmarking the URL of these articles, but most of the bookmarking sites you sugest are nofollow.

     and a question I have, is it a tremendous difference starting using a website than using a blog?…

     Thank you so much
121. Tina

     I have to say that I’m very surprised at the total percentage of content in those 7 niches. It makes sense that maybe these sites need to do some weeding out. Thanks for your input Jennifer! Like always you’ve researched flawlessly!
122. Bill (LoneWolf) Nickerson

     @Internet Marketing Blog, I don’t understand why you find this ironic. Just because the bulk of the articles are spammy doesn’t mean that the entire niche is spammy.

     I know that many people find the topics in those niches offensive and/or scams, but there is obviously a market for them. That means people are searching for this stuff. Both Google and EZA know this. It isn’t up to them to decide if the products and information is relevant — that is the user’s responsibility.

     What they need to do is eliminate the useless fluff filled articles, the spun and derivative articles give the searchers something that meets their needs.

     The thing EZA needs to figure out is whether they can pull that off or not. If not, then they’ll have to ban the niche, but eventually that will cascade into other niches. They’re much better off to tighten the editorial process for the long haul. Provide quality vs. quantity.
123. GregGreenEyes

     Thank you for the parsing. In our case, our site was hit pretty hard even though all our articles are professionally written, edited, and do not link or discuss to any of the 7 types of content you describe–far from it. Now I understand that you are using these as examples of high-density keyword articles, but some of us believe that there is great use in publishing multiple articles on a similar subject in order to provide different perspectives. I don’t see what is wrong with that, but apparently Google does. Bing does not. In addition, the usage of ads which do not interfere with flow of reading should not be penalized. We are very, very careful about that, and yet we were hit. We have many outbound links–many “nofollow” due to the requirement that Google makes regarding ads of any type. Why should we be penalized for that, especially if the ads are useful to our users who have long come to the site for them. Finally, our site gets a lot of traffic for images, which leads to higher bounce rates. This is not intentional. Should we remove such images or the ALT text? This is all very confusing to someone who has worked to be “white hat” for over 10 years and whose site enjoys a great reputation among experts and media.
124. GregGreenEyes

     Forgive the typos above, as I did not cut and paste the spell-checked version.
125. Kevin Ocasio

     Hello Jennifer,

     First time visiting your blog and this was a heck of a first post to read lol. Your research is really an eye opener especially when looking at EzineArticles. Crazy to see that such a large % of content on their site is in those 7 niches!

     I have to agree with Bill (LoneWolf) that EZA should really just get rid of the crappy, no value articles in those niches if they have the resources to do so. Whatever they decide to do, it will be interesting to keep an eye on for sure.

     Off to read some more of your posts Jennifer! Keep up the great work 🙂

     Thanks,
     Kevin
126. Gary

     Hi Jen,

     Wow, that was quite a blog, and number of comments!

     I thought it astonishing Ezine articles would have over 10% of its content relating to those 7 niches. As you say, that can’t be good for the net as a whole, and it’s probably no coincidence that Google announced their algorithm change would affect 11.8% of queries. Makes you wonder if the bulk of those affected queries are related to those problem niches or just to any thin/crappy pages in general?
     I still think the moral is: quality content rules!
127. Niicks

     Hi Jen !

     Thanks for sharing such an excellent research. You did a great awesome research which really helped me to figure out what this update really is.

     Of course even i also did a lot of research at so many different sites and even took some feedback from some users at HubPages. After reading this report i have figured out what this Farmer update really is. So here are my conclusion & opinions:-

     Now after reading your report i now understand that what google is really doing is cleansing all the cluttered and junks stuffs from the cyberspace. We all do, over time we accumulate junks in our cupboards, wardrobe, drawers and it needs cleansing to get rid of old stuffs.

     Let me ask one thing in the keyword “get your ex back” u wrote 16,70,000 articles in ezine. I cant believe that there are 16,70,000 ways to get ex back and to apply these techniques will take me many lifetimes. So all of them are spun or rewritten one and must be junk…etc… So it also applies to many others millions keywords. And many of them link to some main site.

     So for one article (page) of main site the owner has written 10 spun articles for backlinks & to get traffic. That means if there is 1000 pages, the owner will create 10000 pages just for backlinkings with 10000 spun or rewritten content all linking to the main site.

     Now the google is comparing the content of the main sites with the content of backlinking site and taking out junk, re-spin contents sites. The main site is not suffering but the respun are suffering.

     This has been proved by my research at Hubpages.

     A lot of users suffered badly at Hubpages (HP) and many have remained neutral and some saw an increase in their rankings and some no effect in their search ranking for some keywords.

     Those who suffered badly had said that they owned many private sites and these sites didn’t suffered at all but their hub suffered as they were linked to their main sites and were spun or rewritten one. But the main sites had 100% unique contents. In fact for some the rankings of their main sites even increased.

     Those who didn’t suffered at all had no private sites and their hub content were 100% original, unique & lengthy.

     Some suffered to some extent but their articles were purely unique & original and now they have started to see improvement in traffic & search rankings and they are bouncing back. This one says that the google is comparing the hubs with the rest and taking out junk one and giving credits to the original ones so if the hub is original then it will bounce back.

     In my opinion this is a great update from google. It will just a cleansing process after a long long time. And the process is just happening and will stabilize in 1 months.

     Thank you
128. Shahid

     Hello Jen,

     Yes, the thin pages on the site do effects many rankings as per my research. In Ezine case it was thin keywords and repeatability of them.

     Most of the Ezine articles are also republished on many other article directories at a time. associatedcontent.com also experienced and seen dramatic loose in traffic due to duplicate contents.

     Its not Ezine fault though….
129. Lawrence Merrett

     I agree with your analysis overall but the real clues for me as regards how Google are now screening for low quality content / content farms is the high quality sites which were mistakenly penalised initially .

     An excellent example is CultofMac. Why them?

     First all the blogs are about popular Apple products and so are by definition in a keyword saturated content area That is Red Flag One. On any ratio analysis Cult Of Mac scores at least as badly as the worst content farms on an “% of posts on over saturated topic /keyword index measure”. It is 100%! Makes Ezine look positively decent.

     Red Flag Two is the % of page space which is devoted to adverts (actually rather attractive ones). If you calculate this based on % space visible on screen without scrolling it is def on the high side. Attractiveness? I do not think Google can measure this much more likely to be some sort of “impact” measure with weightings based on positioning etc

     Red Flag 3 for me is % of top level categories that are spammy / content farm like /otherwise signal likely low quality content. Cult of Mac has “Reviews”, “How To” and “Deals” which def fall into “bad” category plus “New” and “Apps” which at best fall into a “maybe bad / may be okay” category. AND perhaps as importantly nothing that might fall into a “good” category

     Red Flag 4 is that that the blog post /articles are nearly all on the short side, are keyword saturated (hard not to be if writing about Apple products) and in title often have words like Apple, Ipod, Ipad etc. If you then look at the home page as a whole – which just shows blog summaries – the effect is magnified and then made worse by lots of oversized title “keyword stuffed” headings. All of which looks like over optimized SEO work of the worst kind and is def a low quality / spam content signal.

     Of course despite all these red flags cultofmac actually provides lots of high quality content. I have no doubt Google will be refining its algorithm further. However how exactly do you distinguish between the a concise & accessible but content rich 300 word summary of the Proceeding of the American Medical Association May 2010 on Male Impotence and 1 million spammy low content articles on the same topic given the former is likely to be rather un SEO optimized and all the latter are? That is the 100 billion question for Google

     The real problem of course is that Google can not actually distinguish between high quality and low quality content directly and therefore needs to work through correlates or signals. Alas they can be misinterpreted

     If you have time Susan I would love to know what you think?

     Lawrrence

     ps some people have mentioned a possible issue re duplicated content but since site has such a high page rank, is producing it first and so much of it I not convinced this is a factor. If it was I would expect to have seen some quality newspapers and specialist magazines get hit too.
130. Russell

     I have JUST discovered you, and you now have a new blog follower! This bit of research is really more helpful and better presented than most of what you find in the halls of academia.

     Frankly, this is brilliant. I also believe you are spot on in the theories you espouse here.

     Thank you so much for making your “little brain” hurt. It was worth it. 🙂
131. Bill (LoneWolf) Nickerson

     I’m reminded about golf magazines. Since golf is my favourite sport, I’ve read a lot of them over the past few decades.

     Every month there are articles that give tips to help prevent slicing (probably the # 2 problem golfers are trying to solve — should be #1 though) or achieve more distance (the #1 problem but I believe that curing #2 would help with this).

     The articles and tips are very repetitive since there are only a limited number of approaches to hitting a golf ball. But the magazines continue to sell. The articles are not just republished or spun, but are completely new articles. However, they have little or no new information. This doesn’t hurt their relevance since there are new readers and even people who’ve read the older articles but somehow they just click with the writing or images in the new article in a different way.

     All this is to say that just because a topic has been covered before doesn’t mean that a fresh article on the same topic has no value.

     What doesn’t have value is an article that doesn’t read well (poor grammar, spelling, etc.) or that has no real information. The former any editor should be able to detect easily and an automated process can probably weed out quite a bit of it. The latter is a bit tougher if the editor doesn’t know the niche.
132. Ros

     Great analysis, Jennifer. What it immediately makes me think of is the people who have been mentioning duplicate content on other people’s domains, and whether this could be a symptom of an overall tightening up of the duplicate content filters. In other words, those 7 phrases will generate a lot of very similar internal anchor text all over the site, as well as around the rest of the web.
133. JCom

     Great research! It was very informative reading.
     As a newbie, I have to say that, although much of the information on Ezine is good content, I find the EZA pages look very “cluttered.” I don’t like the layout at all.
     I prefer the colorful layout, graphics,etc on Squidoo. I know some folks may think Squidoo is childlike looking, but I would much rather read an article at Squidoo than at EZA.
     IMHO, I also wish that on EZA there was a little more proofreading on the part of the authors. I find entire words left out. It’s distracting.
134. Jhoe @ Plumbing Columbia

     Great analysis!

     I’m surprised that Ezine had not done more to control the articles on it’s site. They are all human reviewed and Ezine has had a great reputation up until now. I’ve used Ezine a lot, but not for the type of articles that seemed to lead to this problem. I will probably continue to use Ezine and it will be interesting to see how tough they will get on their submissions.

     Thanks
     Jhoe
135. James

     Fantastic research. This is a real eye opener in terms of getting a finger on what really happened. As with everything Google does, there’s a lot of mystery and speculation about it. I love to read something that takes the speculation to a scientific level.

     Thanks to what you’ve done here I’m going to take a harder look at the sites I’m posting on. I think this is just common sense now that Google has made it clear the kind of things it won’t tolerate (and we all know Bing copies what Google does, they there will be ripple effects).

     Since the fall out from this has started to settle I’ve contacted EZA and Hubpages personally and asked them what they want me to do. I think this is wise for anyone who has a lot of content on these sites to avoid being banned (and a lot of premium members are getting heavy slaps). I’ve also started to do more research on guest posting rather than article submissions for the future. I see this as a way to avoid association with potential content farms (whether they are actually or only perceived). It is more work to guest post, but you get your content on better platforms, get more quality traffic and make a better reputation for yourself this way. It’s the future…
136. Joan Stewart

     Hi Jen,

     Thanks for an insightful article.

     The future is possibly a mix of quality guest posts and I will continue to use EA since I enjoy the structure they have in place. When they slap you there is normally good reason.

     Google together with all SEO are constantly on the move and changing, checking what is happening is ongoing.

     So logic prevails, good clean business, fresh content and checking your site regularly is imperative.

     Thanks for the time spent putting all this useful information here for us to ponder over.
137. Ron's Blog - SEO Web Copywriting | Blogging | Internet Marketing

     That was an excellent post, first of all!

     Secondly, here’s what I think about his whole thing.

     Does more articles about a particular topic make it a spam?!

     Is that the criteria on what Google is working? Then I must say, it is very WRONG!

     ‘Cos older the site, more popular the site, more number of pages it contains and that reasons why Ezinearticles might have over 2% content churned out in the last month in those niches.

     This definitely can be a factor, as you listed it out here.

     But then again, it might NOT be. An Acai Berry site is going to have a lot of articles on that particular niche only. So what? It’s spam…ridiculous!

     The post is insightful, but then again it should be requestioned.

     I might make a post on this in the near future. I am just letting the dust settle down.
138. Abayomi Aje

     I have been on your list for ages but I am now going to become a regular reader solely because of this article. Good one. One of my site has been affected but that is because I made the “mistake” of using the article on the site on other sites without rewriting it.
139. Eternity Diamond Wedding Bands

     I love this post. You really went out and did MAJOR research on this topic and it really pays off. It’s interesting that ezinearticles.com got the raw end to this update. The problem here is the amount of spam it contains and that what makes it affected by the “farmers” update.
140. Anna

     You suggest that the fact that Hubpages no-follow all links may affect their ranking negatively.

     As I understand it, do-follow links to a great diversity of websites can affect a website’s ranking negatively. The reason is that the search engine ‘concludes’ that the website is linking uncritically to other websites, and that can awake suspicion about link exchange or content farming.
141. Tony

     I think there’s an overlooked oversaturated niche….the niche on “How to make money on the internet” 😉
142. Ryan B.

     This is too bad, I’ve used ezinearticles many times in the past and with good results. Now it looks like I have to find another good site.
143. Marcelo

     Hello Jennifer!

     I’ve noticed on sites like Squidoo and others, that link start as no follow, but if you are a good little boy, some may well become do follow in time.

     Thx 4 the report!
     very clever
144. Anna

     @ Ryan B: or maybe you can just bookmark it.
145. Download Profit Jackpot Software

     Any change in the google algo will never effect the blog with regular and unique content also with more visiting time like for more than 10 sec.
146. Elisabeth Kuhn

     That’s a VERY useful post, Jennifer. And actually kind of reassuring too. Thanks so much for putting in all the work. I sure appreciate it!

     The way I read this is that if I’m not messing with the blacklisted topics, I might be okay. And from what I can tell, my EZA articles are pretty much where they were before.

     Also, it seems that EZA articles have been scoring lower for a while now — I found that goarticles and articlesbase versions of the articles (usually slightly rewritten) score way better than EZA. Maybe this farmer thing has been going on for a while before news of it leaked out…

     Thanks again!

     Elisabeth
147. Electrical Columbia

     Yes, there were a lot of casualties from this latest Google update, but I also don’t think that Google has finished their updating and I think there will be more casualties in the near future. So far, the rankings on my Ezine articles have not suffered that much and I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
148. bicyclegourmet

     PPG – your perceptive anaylsis of the “farmer/panda”
     update(actually i would have gone with “panda farmer”)
     is(to quote paul simon’s song): “born at the right time.”

     actually what is needed now – to get people thinking about the disparities you so lucidly point out between
     the google approved and the google spanked.

     p.s. good luck with your ezine articles content!
149. American Flags

     Wow, what a great article potpie Girl. This is a great example of quality content. It’s unique, shows thought and research, brings new light to a subject. I linked to this article because it’s the best response I’ve seen to the “farmer” update. Ezinearticles better “Man Up”
150. Vincent Malatrait

     That’s a crazy good analysis, and I can’t believe you have time to do this with all the other stuff that you do and are involved in online.

     I am trying to concentrate on mobile marketing and the mobile web, and wonder if this update affects mobile web advertising.

     It really is hard to get a handle on it.
151. Marcel White

     Hi Jennifer,
     Congratulations for this splendid piece of work. Thanks also to San Coils who wrote an article that showed me the way to your site.
     Now I am positively angry with EzineArticles. I have some articles there: original and innovative content, serious subjects, more than 700 words. And it’s always difficult to get my articles approved. Why? Because I want to add pictures or images to help readers understand what I explain. Or because I tried to offer a free ebook with more articles that complement those I submitted. And I accepted all that because I believed that it was a sign of good quality content. Now, thanks to you, I learned that at least 10% of their articles are about dubious subjects. What a frustration! I wish I have a “patience enlarger”.
     Thanks.
     Marcel White
152. George

     I have to say that I have been experiencing an increase in traffic across all of my sites and articles. Maybe I was lucky enough to pick the right ones when I was testing out sites, but this new algorithm change is OK with me.
153. Child Care Columbia

     Good report!

     Google has spanked Ezine, but I wonder if that effects how Google evaluates the links created on the Ezine articles. I really haven’t seen any of my websites drop in their rankings.
154. Genevieve

     Boy am I late!
     Ah well, better late than never.

     Google’s stirred things up again. I’m in agreement with Wayne that ultimately money is their end result, but they pretend it’s for the customer experience. Back when there was buzz about Google Instant, Google claims it’s to save users time in writing, to find what they need faster. (Sorry, but I wasn’t aware this was a race.) But in reality, everyone knows they’re targeting keywords with higher search volume so they get more cost per click.

     The solution for me–for everyone–is to not put all your traffic eggs in one basket, even the Google Egg Basket. When rankings waver with the next new latest and greatest change, at least you’re not scrambling for your footing.

     I agree with and believe in the idea, for I too notice a lot of rehashed spam sites, but if only money were not their major motive . . .

     On another note, I’m curious as to what will happen to places I know you use like Seo Link Vine for backlinks and content. In the five-step article strategy, you emphasize using one article. Won’t the hundreds of rewritten versions linking to your site cause it to lose value?
155. Jacques Groenen

     I like this kind of analysis and content, especially because I get daily a lot of spam emails from so callad gurus who have nothing else to say as “this guy made xyz dollars with the next cheat & spam method. Internet as an automated garbage can, In Germany a secretary of defense recently had to give up his job because he cheated a university degree by plagiarism. Internet is full of cheaters who automate cheating and call/called(?) this Internet Marketing, mainly.a tsunami of garbage and get rich quick copy and paste foam. I don’t like big brother Google, but mountains of nonsensical garbage is even worse. Let’s wait and see where we are in 1 year.
156. Phil

     Great analysis, numbers can be such fun! I’ve been wondering whether ‘average time on page’ might be soemthing they start to play with too – related to your comment about ad clutter. But, say there were two pages with no ads, then the one with higher avg time on page could be seen as having higher value to the reader (summed over lareg numbers). Sure, they could be frigged, but not easily where there is high visitor traffic anyway.

     Keep it up!

     Phil
157. Evelyn

     It all makes perfect sense now – except, I’m sure there are more than 7 topics in question. I’m keeping an eye on a few of my keywords that used to be on the 1st page of google for the EZine article and right now, they come and go. It’s apparent that Google has not yet decided on their final update. I’m sure they’ll tweak until we all go Postal!
158. Rick C.

     Interesting numbers and analysis. I’m really surprised after all the good things that I’ve heard about Ezine articles. I bet this latest shake-up from Google really shook their higher staff up. And, from what I see in your numbers, it should have.
159. Hazuwan Hamdan

     Million thanks Jennifer.
     Now I think I understand what’s going on.
     Your blog definitely will be one of my best resource to learn a lot of internet stuff.

     Again thanks….
160. Marcel White

     Here you have my testimonial.
     GOOGLE SERPs quality didn’t improve with the new algo. Links from content farms almost disappeared but were displaced by links I’d rather prefer not to have. Instead of links from classic top article directories I found that the first position was for a link from a PR=0 site that copied and destroyed my articles and made them impossible to understand. I believe they were auto-translated from English to Chinese mandarin, then to Brazilian and back again to English (or so). Controlling content farms is a good idea but there is still a lot to do. No one wants to replace a bad solution that works with a good solution that doesn’t work.
     Marcel White
161. John Walker

     Great analysis Jennifer!

     I work with the oldest coupon website and it was wiped off the map for “coupon” search. We used to be in the top 3 and now we don’t even come up! Your analysis gave me some inspiration and seemed spot on with what we believe is happening. Our top 2 competitors were not effected while we and several others were destroyed.

     I really believe you are onto something. Would you be willing to analyze our site against our competitors in a similar fashion and to consult with us? I sent this analysis to our CEO and he immediately asked me to hire you to consult with us.

     Thanks again,

     John
162. John Walker

     Great analysis Jennifer!

     I work with the oldest coupon website and it was wiped off the map for “coupon” search. We used to be in the top 3 and now we don’t even come up! Your analysis gave me some inspiration and seemed spot on with what we believe is happening. Our top 2 competitors were not affected while we and several others were destroyed.

     I really believe you are onto something. Would you be willing to analyze our site against our competitors in a similar fashion and to consult with us? I sent this analysis to our CEO and he immediately asked me to hire you to consult with us.

     Thanks again,

     John
163. Åke L.

     A very interesting read Jennifer!

     We’ve all heard a lot of talk about the algo update targeting content farms especially, but as you say, this seems to be pure invention.

     When you think about it, content farms per se shouldn’t be a problem, only the large quantity of lousy content in them.

     I believe Google is moving in the right direction with this update, although I find it a bit worrisome that the big G has such an enormous power over the internet. Unfortunately, with so many sites relying on organic traffic and the other search engines being so far behind, I don’t see the trend changing anytime soon.
164. Tony

     Hi Jennifer,

     That is an amazing post. I was targeting one of those niches too, mine had nothing to do with enlarging anything either 🙂 It is true though the rubbish has to be cleared away. It is a lesson to me to steer clear of over-saturated potentially spammy subjects in future.

     There is so much to go after it shouldn’t be that hard.

     Thanks for all the great info. Tony
165. Auto Repair

     Great post, Jennifer. I can certainly understand why Google is making changes to get rid of all of the “fluff” and EzineArticles and the others should pay the price.

     In your table, I found another bit of data that I found interesting, also. For the search term “pc for tv”, EzineArticles showed 12,100 sites using that phrase and ArticlesBase showed 142,000. Now, for using that phrase in the URL, EzineArticles showed only 6 while ArticlesBase showed 10,000. Why is that term being used so much on ArticlesBase and not the other sites? Doesn’t figure.

     Well, I found this bit of info interesting,too!

     Thanks.
166. Lovina

     Hi Jenni,

     this is the first article I’ve read about the Google change that shows some analysis rather than personal opinion or experience. Cool!

     What is surprising is the results of your investigation work, it really all makes sense, like nothing else I read did. Thanks so much, I think I’ll be giving article writing and submission a break for a while.

     I’m not sure Google can avoiding indexing spam content by this measure alone, and hitting the whole article directory is really kind of hard on the good stuff too. If the issue is about just gaining links through articles, won’t SEO just look to links elsewhere?

     Love your blog, thanks so much!

     Lovina
167. GreenEyes

     I have an issue with the “no-follow” links theory. I can see how people might use them to hoard link juice, but if you have paying advertisers, you are told that Google wishes you to add “no-follow” to identify them. Are you being penalized because you are identifying the paying advertisers, even if such paying advertisers are part of directories which people regularly visit and where advertisers which to have a strong presence? I am confused. Which rule should we follow to not be penalized (not that I expect an answer). This may be just one of the factors, as I cannot make heads or tails as to why our great content is being penalized (our article pages have no ads).
168. Fisayo @ Secrets of Entrepreneurship

     Great informative post Jen. Thanks for the analysis
169. Adam

     just wanted to say you have impressed me with all those insights. keep it up.
170. Thomas

     AWESOME post Pot Pie Girl. By far the best I have read about the Farmer Update.

     And the Algo update only helps my websites out as I am not a part of any of those 7 SPAMMY niches.

     There is way too much clutter out there and Im sure Google is wasting massive amounts of time and resources (money) crawling that junk.

     It would be wise for those sites and even Press Release sites and directories to drop the junk.

     I mean I have never bought penis pills or Acai Drinks. Have you?

     My final comment is about hubpages. I hope they take a hit because it upsets me to add good content only to see my links turn to nofollow.
171. Susanna, The Small Ebiz Coach

     OMG. I totally loved this article! I was actually thinking of trying to figure this out and am SO happy because now I don’t have to. YAY!
172. Sarah Drinkwater

     I sometimes use these farm sites for backlinks, in fact I have some websites that are almost exclusively supported form these type of sites and I haven’t seen any negative effects on their search ranking – so maybe google’s updates only really effect the content farms and not the sites that they link out to.