Scripps Employees Called 'Hackers' For Exposing Massive Security Flaw
Suspected PayPal Hackers Seek Deal To Stay Out Of Prison
Google updates search to massively bias original content
Google has just made a change to its search engine that noticeably impacts 12% of all queries. Yet again, it is aimed at reducing the prevalence of non-original content farm content in search results. It also heavily biases sites with "original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis," increasing their chance of being at the top. This only affects google.com at the moment, but it will be rolled out to other domains in due course.Last month Google publicised its first anti-content farm maneuver -- and while that only affected 2% of queries, we still noticed a significant increase of traffic here on Download Squad. Then, just a couple of weeks ago, Google launched the Personal Blocklist, an extension that lets you filter out content farms from your search results.
With today's massive alteration of Google's search algorithm, it really could mean the difference between life and death for ad-supported sites that produce original content. A quick look at our logs from last night suggest that it could be a very big boost indeed.
It should be noted that the results from the Personal Blocklist haven't been used yet -- but apparently, Google's search changes filter out 84% of the sites that users have been blocking with the extension; a sure sign that Google has hit the nail on the head.
Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsDanFeb 25th 2011 7:57AM
Finally. Good for searchers. And good for people like you guys, who actually work for their living.
bobFeb 25th 2011 11:09AM
Good to hear. I'd be interested in seeing a follow-up on this once you guys have got some decent log data just to see how significant the boost will really be for original sites whose stories were being republished everywhere...
jfjbFeb 25th 2011 1:45PM
Greasemonkey serves the PC realm with its own Google Domain Blocker, if you're interested... look it up -- on Google search, ah-ah-ah
whoviatingFeb 25th 2011 3:42PM
While improving searches by reducing the number of links that simply repeat the original source is fine, the issue of standards is always present and can be worrying.
For example, as a technical matter, how is "original content" to be determined and measured? Consider a newspaper columnist who writes 500 words about something. I assume that would be considered 100% original content. Then someone quotes 100 of those words before writing 400 more analyzing and disputing the columnist's argument. That's "only" 80% original content. Does it become downgraded on an "original content" scale because it followed the Internet tradition of quoting what it was arguing about? If not, how do you go about doing that?
Then there's a philosophical matter: The phrase "thoughtful analysis" is a loophole big enough to drive all kinds of political bias (of some sort or another) through. Who decides what is "thoughtful" commentary? And on what basis do they decide?
I confess that my real concern here is not that there will be bias in favor of either the left or the right but a bias in favor of the center; that is, in favor of middle-of-the-road conventional wisdom, a bias in favor of political comfort food with the reach beyond that confined to the largest, most hit-ridden sites in a self-perpetuating cycle that leaves lesser-known voices even more out in the cold than they already are.