Google Algorithm Change Confirmed to Drop Demand Media Traffic 40%
Google Algorithm Change Confirmed to Drop Demand Media Traffic 40%
Posted 04/25/2011 at 2:50pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
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Early in the year, Google began addressing complaints that their search results had become polluted with poor quality links from so-called "content farms". The search giant rolled out an update to its search algorithm known internally as "Panda" at the end of February. Now Experian Hitwise, a web traffic research firm, has directly measured the impact of the change. Noted content farm Demand Media has taken a 40% traffic hit since the update happened.
The sites in question have been lambasted in the conventional blogosphere for being driven only by search hits and posting poor quality content. Using search engine optimization, these articles were able to reach the top of Google results and draw in users. Experian Hitwise used the downstream click-through of users that visited Google to evaluate the traffic lost to Demand Media. The 40% figure is just the average across all the Demand sites.
The eHow domain saw a 29% drop off. But one of Demand's smaller sites, Answerbag, is down over 80%. Stock in Demand Media has toppled 40% in the last few weeks. The company has had little to say about the issue, but we imagine they are not amused. Similar sites Mahalo and Associated Content are down 78% and 61% respectively.
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Sovereign
April 26, 2011 at 8:00am
Victory! I've blocked/banned those sites anyway, but still. Take that!
Balgaroo
April 26, 2011 at 1:48am
Low qaulity should be left out.
Anyone that is using Bing and is happy about it should be happy to know that my mother loves it too...
I will continue to use Google and all its power search comands to get what I need, when I need, without any poor search results.
Feel free to post any reasponce to this to show your ignorace. I shall never check this thread again because I am done with it.
bautrey
April 25, 2011 at 8:17pm
I wish when i google for something, i actually find what i'm looking for... like when searching for an answer for something, i dont want forums filled with stupid people who dont know shit and i have to go through like 10 pages just to filter out all the junk.
Danthrax66
April 25, 2011 at 2:55pm
I've switched to Bing because google's new algorithm sucks. I don't mind the results from low quality sites I do mind not being able to find useful information because google feels the need to censor their search results.
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