Loading ...Any time Google makes an update to its algorithm, it’s a big deal for webmasters. Following this trend, the Web community has reacted strongly to MayDay, a recent algorithm update from the search engine.
As Google’s Matt Cutts explains to WebProNews, one of the primary goals of MayDay was to address the people who do the “bare minimum” to avoid being classified as spammers. This type of content is often referred to as content farms. Due to the many complaints Google received about these content farms, the search company made changes to its algorithm to ensure that it returns the best sites for users.
“We’re trying to spot what are the signals for quality for pages or sites that really are going to be good for users,” says Cutts.
If webmasters find themselves affected by these changes, Cutts suggests that they re-evaluate their content to make sure they are providing the highest quality content. According to Cutts, the sites most readily affected are those with auto-generated pages.
On the topic of Caffeine, Cutts compares the index changes as moving from a bus to a limo. Back in 2003, the updates were slow, but with Caffeine, the index is faster, fresher, and richer. He says as soon as a document is documented, it is indexed.
In this interview, Cutts also encourages webmasters to submit video sitemaps. Just as regular sitemaps are important to help Google discover pages, the search company wants to be able to have a comprehensive view of all the videos on the Web as well.
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Well, having a portal completely based on User Generated Content is affected by #mayday also, don’t think the explanation is completely correct.
Yeah, need to explain more. Farms are bad regardless
You guys need a good proof reader- Goole Buzz?
I wonder how MayDay views sites the run repurpose press releases and feature stories. They aren’t content a farms but much of the content is syndicated. Anybody know the answer?
Google has taken down a number of Blogger sites of late. Apparently one reason given was that sites that use press releases were considered as “scraper sites.”
Nice to hear that good content will be rewarded above content farms. What happens if content from a genuine site (like ours) is plagiarised? Will the original site be penalised?
Visits to my website went up 50% after the change and sales also went up.
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Now the results are sometimes much worse than before. For example, the phrase “pozycjonowanie” (Polish equivalent of SEO) gives so much more irrelevant websites (especially in google.com) – forums and blogs that have only comments with that link anchor and the post is about something entirely different. Even in top 20.
Greetings from Poland.
When I inspired nicknaming the update as the Google Mayday Update on my post on webmasterworld, details here http://dusky.blognalists.com/2010/06/12/i-nicknamed-it-google-mayday-update/, I never thought Matt actually agreed with me, thanks Matt.
I concede that from my observations of the algo change which I predicted well before the announcement, that it seems to be geared towards content quality, uniqueness and freshness, however, as it happened before from the Florida update, many sites were mistakenly wiped out I am afraid and Google needs to re-tweak this new Algorithm as It did for Florida.
Google is well intentioned In my opinion, nonetheless, it has so far done some good undoubtedly, but for long tail, ecommerce and sites with aggregated content took a good hammering despite many having good unique and fresh content.
Google mayday update seems to have gotten two things wrong on two counts:
Count one: The algorithm seems to view content as unique and fresh only on the first site it originates from, granted that should be correct, but news networks for example do breaking news which are reported and duplicated in core on many other large websites, BBC, ABC, FOX…all report the same major story, are we to believe only one of them will be considered fresh as they broke the news first!
Count two: Many ecommerce sites took a good bashing as they IMO tend to sell goods manufactured by others, should the algorithm view their content as duplicate, hence content farms because they do not manufacture their own but sell other’s.
Matt certainly seems excited about it all!
Glad to see content farms addressed and I’ve noticed the difference in the rankings – much less garbage on the first page.
Every time there’s an update my sites move further up the rankings, so glad to see genuine content winning out of the changes.
Quality content will always win. Making sites with short term policies and with low quality content is not a good idea.
Dusky… I agree with you on “Google needs to re-tweak this new Algorithm as It did for Florida.” I have seen some STUPID stuff with this update regardless of the many PHD Chumps that tweak the algorithm.
Well, the change will not please everyone as usual I guess, but overall, and once their update settles down within the new caffeine infrastructure framework, we’ll see a better search quality. As to those large sites that have seem dramatic demotion, be it by mistake or an algo miscalculations, I am sure they are looking into that right now, don’t forget, they do many mini tweaks within a year and those sites who deserved their rank but somehow got stripped of it will in time regain it. What Matt highlighted is spot on, the key is for webmasters to improve content uniquness and quality for users.
Yes, for many searchers right now the search experience has seen some deterioration and improvement at the same time, no doubt the tweaking is still ongoing. I don’t expect Matt to explain that, it just does make sense that many large well know authority sites plunged tanked during and after the mayday update, and it is in Google’s interest as well as in the interest of searchers to investigate why and tweak things, same as when the Florida algo update had to be re-tweaked.
Matt!
One way of knowing if most users are happy or not with their search experience when visiting the sites google recommended as the qualifying sites at the top of the SERPs is to introduce the smiley / sad icons. Webmasters. download them from Google as javascript snippets and place on their sites, when a user comes to the site, he/she will click either the sad smiley or the happy smiley indicating their experience. No need for analytics, Google toolbar, adsense data, partners data…this will be enough in terms of answering the “are you satisfied with what you found on this site?” question!
OK, you might say, relying on this as a ranking factor can be unreliable, many sites with the financial clout can just employ people to click positively on those icons, yes, but doesn’t Google possesses the technical know-how and the ability to trace fraudsters with all sorts of referrer / geolocation data etc, surely anyone tries any blackhat like this and they will be zapped!
Unfortunately, Google results appear to be less relevant rather than more since the changes. Our office has changed to Bing as the results are better.
It doesnt mention ecommerce sites either. My site has over 100 pages of products but with only a very small amount of detail about each item.My site has dropped from Page 1 No 1 to Page 12!!!!!! I am guessing that I am now going to have to beef up each and every item page?!!
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In addition, the May Day update has meant that Google is now showing more results that are synonymous to the keyphrase that searchers are searching for; as much as 70% ! In other words, 70% of the results that Google is now showing on their first page are for related keyphrases to what the searcher is typing in. This means that because of the update, some sites are no longer ranking for those longtail phrases. The way to capitalise on this is to ensure your site has a good silo structure based on clear categories or themes that Google can identify with and send you traffic for their related terms.
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Google results appear to be less relevant rather than more since the changes. Our office has changed to Bing as the results are better.
It doesnt mention ecommerce sites either.
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I chanced upon this very clear explanation of the recent Google changes. The title of the article is “Google Tells Webmasters to Prioritize Content”. Here’s the link: http://makalay.net/google-tells-webmasters-to-prioritize-content
You guys need a good proof reader.
I spent really nice time reading yours articles. I’m happy that I step in right here.
I like this blog. I’ll for sure be peeping into it frequently.
Anyone notice a recent shuffling around for their ecommerce site in the past week? The major effect we noticed were exactly what everyone else saw, dupe product descriptions causing a heck of a problem. This should finally clean up a lot of SERP results.
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In this interview, Cutts also encourages webmasters to submit video sitemaps. Just as regular sitemaps are important to help Google discover pages, the search company wants to be able to have a comprehensive view of all the videos on the Web as well.
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