Google announced yesterday a major update to their search algorithm.
This is interesting in part because they usually do NOT make announcements of such, and if they ever talk about them, it is usually well after the fact.
However, there has been a LOT of talk about search quality recently – much of it critical of Google.
In recent weeks Google has done a lot on this. Some of it talk (explaining things, talking about what they are up to, attacking Bing).
They also penalized three major websites – J.C. Penney, Forbes, and Overstock.com – for cheating.
They added a feature to their Chrome browser that lets you blacklist a site for your own searches – and reports on it to Google.
Now they’ve announced “a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries” “to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.”
The complete announcement:
I think we are getting the message they are serious about improving Search Quality.
