What does this spell for Dexknows.com, Superpages.com or Yellowpages.com? The numbers on overall search have been receding to levels close to or below 2004. Does this algorithm change spell doom for online yellow pages sites? If you have done searches over the last month for a local plumber or landscaper you’ll find that most of the online yellow pages sites are not showing in results anymore. Time will tell, but I will continue to watch spend levels on the PPC side for all three as well as look at the trends and report back.
Google’s search quality police cracked down on content farms and other low-quality Websites with an algorithm change that impacts 12 percent of the company’s search results.
Google Feb. 24 said it had flipped the switch on an algorithm change that pushes down low-quality Websites in its search engine, the latest in a series of moves to combat the rise of content farms and other Websites that infest the Web.
The ranking change, targeted at Websites that copy content from other Websites and those that provide little value for searchers, will impact 12 percent of the company’s search results, said Google Fellow Amit Singhal and his lieutenant, Google principal engineer Matt Cutts.
Google didn’t mention content farms by name, but Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan posited the search engine could well be targeting sites such as Demand Media’s eHow, which produces both solid content and low-quality content.
Demand Media responded to Google’s change rather diplomatically in a blog post, noting that it hadn’t seen any material net impact to its content business.