Have you heard about Google's 'farmer' update?
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Late Wednesday night, Feb. 23rd Google rolled out a search update which they say effects about 12% of their searches. From what I can see on SearchWarp, it has only effected our old, popular articles ('How to tell if you are pregnant' being one of them, for example.)
It's resulted in a 40% drop in traffic overall. What stands out is that we have all these articles which are many years old, which have been copied by so many other websites over the years, and now it seems that SearchWarp isn't getting credit for being the original publisher of these articles. The big sites like eHow and about(dot)com are now getting all the traffic for these articles, even thought they obviously appeared on SearchWarp first.
Another oddity is that this isn't a site-penalty. It's not like SearchWarp has been penalized overall, just the most popular 250 or so articles. New articles continue to be picked up by Google quickly and receive just as much traffic as normal.
This update is being called the 'farmer' update because Google said it was targeting 'content farms', or sites which have lots of low-quality content. Thus far I'd disagree with them if they thought this was a step in the right direction.
I'd be happy to discuss this with anyone who has questions.
Answers to this question:The way I see it, at this point of my understanding, is this: The main focus and point of SW, is to promote the members articles..but also to advance Sw itself..now if this promotion is indeed being turned back, so to speak, on Sw, to it's detriment- then I see the debacle for Sw. SW superior and earned rights and place on the Internet, must somehow be safeguarded, while still fulfilling it's original objective. A formidable enterprise Bruce, but one that I feel you have the potential to succeed at, not without much work of the mind and intellect tho- perseverance and determination will produce prevalence. I have every confidence in your ability to suceed in this.--Ella
I had read the update yesterday on Q&A. Just wasn't sure what to comment. I knew it was a bit of trouble for you. No matter what happens, I still want to continue to write here. I will be sharing a new article in which there will be one verse from the Rig Veda, and that will seem to make most sense to me and all of us at this point of time. That would be to just "stick together". Testing times will always give us more strength.
DM, I have the same thought as you but whatsoever outcome that might be, I am with SW but I really don't know what they (Google) want to do. Is it an Internet game or what I am in the dark. I know about eHow and about(dot) com.
Sometimes a big tree will cause a strong wind and I believe this could be due to certain factors.
Bruce you have all of us stand by you (SW) that's one thing for sure .Ok!
Well, these are just mind strategies according to me. Like Jennifer put it rightly, not to be afraid of change. :-)
With all due respect I understand their problem, but equaly understand your position. Google are effectivly suffering from their own success, they are now so huge and powerful that whenever they decide to repaint the house their paint brush is so huge that the furniture, the dog and the cats are included.
No Bruce I am not calling you a dog!!! So what are they to do? Your problem is orriginal content if I understand the situation correctly, so, my suggestion is get the team around the kitchen table and see if you can coax, persuade people to give you exclusivity, a tricky one I,m sure.
I personally always post my articles also to my blog, so how if you award more ??? Browny points to those that submit articles only to Search Warp and their own Blogs, or sites. Does that help?
Something you would know much better than I, whats stops anyone stealing (copy and pasting) any article from anyplace?
I understand Googles worry from a different viewpoint, many of my keyword searches are dominated by farms right now. So, for example, someone looking to buy a Doberman dog will probably not find the number one breeder of that dog, but a site featuring one hundred Doberman dog breeders.
There is an alternative solution for Google, if they can afford it?
They employ, a mountain of staff across the world to physically and in real time police the web and filter the wheat from the chaff.
Maybe they have reached the end of the road with robots?
PS Ezine Articles have I believe suffered even more than you. There site is very static. Actually Bruce does not your very valuable comments to articles feature incorporate an element of orriginality to your site? If yes try to promote that end of it.........Phew!! I only meant to say hello!
I,ve only now read the thread from this........well I am in a different time zone. I hold to my somewhat spontaneous observation above. If you can find some way to incorprate the articles submitted with the comments submitted the articles will have no value to another site.
Come on I know you are very clever with this stuff, Jean told me ages ago. You have a great site here, fight for it.............and WIN!!!
Thanks for the pep talk, Terrence. I'd love to get more exclusive articles on SearchWarp, and I've worked on that for years, but there's just never been a way that I could figure out how to do it. Because we have so many articles posted every day, if we paid people $10 per article to post articles exclusively on SearchWarp, we'd be paying $4,000 a day just to add an equal amount of exclusive articles to the non-exclusive articles already coming in. If I had $4,000 a day, I'd probably be living in a small villa close to where you are now, and not working on SearchWarp!
And the scrapers... we are getting hit harder by scrapers right now than we ever have in the history of SearchWarp. I've been blocking new IP's every few minutes, but they keep changing.
I do believe that maybe this is the beginning of the decline of Google... I'm hoping to get some table scraps from facebook, and maybe that will make up for the loss from Big G. I know lots of other website owners who would love to make a break from Google if there was an alternative. Come on, Facebook!
Sorry, I did not mean to give a "pep talk", I guess its my style of writing. No I bow to your superior knowledge of how the net works, particularly with regards to Google.
You did not comment on what I thought was my most valid point regarding Search Warp? Feedback and comments? Am I wrong about this also, does this not give you an authentic orriginality, which if I understand correctly is what they are trying to achieve?
Sorry, but what are scrapers? thieves, yes? Can you not inbed all of the stuff on your site with some stuff to make it useless to another?
Actually, as you will gather I,m not so smart with the techno stuff.
Another try, no not money for contributers, no not at all. Something else, I have no clue what...A trip to Walley World?
Total Answers: 4, Total Page Views: 1,097.excuse me are we talking about free advertising is that why my book flew out the door in tiawan?!
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