Ezinearticles.com Response to Google's new "Farmer Algorith"

Google bots on-the-move

If you thought it was difficult in the past to get your article
published on Ezinearticles.com, things are going to be
even tougher in the future.  Ezinearticles.com is
predicting that it's current 40.6% rejection rate will
climb to at least 60% because of new measures it is
putting in place to improve the quality of the site.

These changes have come as an immediate response to
what is being termed as Googles's "Farmer Algorith"
changes.  Google has decided that it is time to
change its search engine algorith to dump poor quality
sites from high rankings:

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites
—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from
other websites or sites that are just not very useful.

Google plans instead to give more value to what they consider
to be high quality sites:
...it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites
with original content and information such as research,
in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Unfortunately sites like Ezinearticles.com, who go out of their
way to create quality through human editing and other measures,
have been among the hardest hit.

Ezinearticles.com has already recorded the immediate downturn
in traffic it experienced after the changes were announced:

While we adamantly disagree with anyone who places the
“Content Farm” label on EzineArticles.com, we were not
immune to this algorithm change. Traffic was down 11.5%
on Thursday and over 35% on Friday. In our life-to-date,
this is the single most significant reduction in market trust
we’ve experienced from Google.

There has been an immediate response by Ezinearticles.com
which has signaled the following changes:

1. tighten the software mechanism that detects copied content
2. no longer accept submissions directly from WordPress blogs
3. reduction in number of ads per page (to keep article reader focused)
4. 600-850 words may become the new normal with 400 being the minimum
5. increased rejection of "advertorials"
6. tightening up on categories that tend to encourage spam or poor content
7. may start rejecting content that is not unique to
EzineArticles.com alone. (this is in line with some news release outlets.)


So you can expect a whole lot of tightening up on Ezinearticles.com
but also on HubPages, AssociatedContent.com, Suite101.com and Buzzle.com
- all of whom have been negatively impacted by the Google Algorith Changes.

Some of the winners in the aftermath of the Google Algorith Changes are:

1. eHow.com
2. youtube.com
3. ebay.com
4. facebook.com
5. instructables.com

...plus Sears and Walmart!!
  
Dan Abbamont who compared some stats before and after the change
based on Google Canada suggested that Squidoo too lost 15 places
in search results.

This is not supported by other stats supplied by researchers.

Squidoo's recent appointment of large numbers of GiantSquids
as SquidAngels to do quality control over allocated
topic "neighborhoods" (sub-categories) was probably done in
anticipation of these Google Algorith Changes.

Whatever, the final fall-out is, the whole arena of article marketing
and content creation has changed yet again.

Related articles:

PotPieGirl gives her perspective on these 2011
Google Algoritm Changes changes:
http://www.potpiegirl.com/2011/03/my-theory-on-the-google-algo-change/trackback/

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Ron Passfield, PhD is the creator of SquidooRoo.com, a 6 month
program in social media marketing.  The Program covers,
content creation, social networking and promotion including
press releases.