In the meantime I'm deeply disappointed to see that the collateral damage of a change largely driven by a problem I don't understand includes faqs.org losing most of its ranking.
And get Google results with eHow as #1 with title: "How to do X"
And when you click it, you get..."you can't do X"
When in reality you actually can do X...all you have to do is hit #2 result for a forum to find out how.
Granted these were usually automotive questions...but still...the fact that eHow outranks legitimate sources with BS 1 paragraph of wordy text should qualify for penalizing them in the rankings.
This update seemed to have a much larger impact on user generated article directories than it did the new-wave content farms like eHow. That ezinearticles and Hubpages finally got hit doesn't surprise me much, because they are frequently exploited as a source for followed links by site owners.
I know there is loads of crap out there, but I'm a bit confused by the overall attitude towards user written articles. It seems like a baby with the bathwater approach.
The same people most against articles sites, don't seem to have a problem with search results full of crappy youtube vids, yahoo answers, amazon and other shopping, twitter gibberish, and whatever else that isn't exactly Pulitzer Prize winning content.
Why is it that whenever someone negatively comments on eHow, a bunch of new accounts come out of nowhere to defend it?
I'm sure this can also be used for evil purposes by content scrapers, but as a startup with limited resources, an automated (and free :) way to stop such content would be great.
If my site is a content farm, then surely so are sites like Stack Overflow and Trip Advisor, as I'm using the same model of moderated and curated user generated content, and while I don't think my site is quite as useful as Stack Overflow (what is?), I've been running this site as a labour of love since 1997, and I've had countless emails from people who've found the site useful, so I must be doing something right.
"we've still got several changes in the pipeline"
Matt, are these changes/domains related to the farmer update specifically or just in general? Any idea when we can expect to see something?
"Which websites dropped the most in the latest Google algorithm change? - Quora" reads as though the answer to the question is Quora.
Taken from HN's Guidelines:
If the original title includes the name of the site, please
take it out, because the site name will be displayed after
the link anyway.http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1073723
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2128170
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439043
I think it's pretty widely accepted (especially here on HN) that what Mahalo is doing doesn't benefit anyone except themselves.
http://www.jongales.com/blog/2011/02/14/list-of-content-farm...
Happened a lot sooner than I expected though. :)
ETA: On the plus side, my articles should make the cut if they go on a purge to raise the quality level.