Google Working to Help Good Sites Caught Up in Anti-Spam Cleanup

Posted 03/02/2011 at 3:56pm | by Ryan Whitwam

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In an effort to deal with the perceived issue with low-quality content spam in search results, Google updated it algorithm last week. While that sounds all well and good on the surface, it has caused a headache for some legitimate sites that got caught up in the dragnet. Sites like Cult of Mac and Buzzle have found themselves with little remaining Google Juice. Google has said it is aware of the issues, and will work to correct these issues.

Independent analytics firm Sistrix compiled a full list of the winners and losers, and while most of the changes seem reasonable, that doesn't come as much comfort to those sites that were downgraded without cause. It is not clear just what criteria Google used to downrank sites, but some have speculated Cult of Mac's extensive publishing of "How-to" articles got them flagged by the Google bot.

Currently, Cult of Mac is reporting that their ranking has improved, so it seems that El Goog is already trying to put things right. The danger is that future sited could find themselves with poor Google ranking because they resemble the spam sites in some way. Do you think Google will be able to clear things up without too much collateral damage.