The Big G has updated its algorithm which will now supposedly weed out sites with poor quality content, called, content farms. Google has been whipping up frenzy against these content farms for some time now as users have complained about abundance of top ranking spam sites dominating the search results.

In an attempt to deliver high quality search results, Google embarked on a mission to update its algorithm.

According to Google Blog:

“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. At the same time, 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.”

These changes will affect 11.8% of their queries. So how has this Google update affected the sites? 

Many big sites such as ezine articles, PRNewswire, PRNewswire, Technorati, Associated Content, Suite101, HubPages, Mahalo, EzineArticles have reported negative reports from this algorithm change.

Almost every of site would hate to be labeled as a “content farm” and many of them have objected on how they have been penalized even though they have been providing high quality content over the years.

What has piqued the industry analysts is how eHow not only escaped any harsh penalty but also benefitted from the update even though they have been accused of low quality content on their site.

Google is not going to reveal what it constitutes as good quality content and how it judges it, any time in near future. A SEO company can only guesstimate what can help them in getting good rankings. For now the only clue is “provide good quality content which benefit users”. Whatever that means!