Winners and losers in the new algorithm change

[dannyhw]

I'm in the middle of mining data, but I've got enough to give a summary of some stuff that's going on.

Across all the big article directories, there's an average loss per page/keyword of 35 positions. These sites got hit hardest out of everyone. EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticlesBase, Buzzle, all those guys. No exceptions.

Hubpages lost an average of about 30 positions but squidoo lost only 15. This might be some kind of good hint.

AssociatedContent got off a little easier, lost an average of 20.

Livestrong is up 15, epinions is up 15 as well. Etsy is way up with a +30. I think they were the biggest winners in this update.

Answers.com, Investopedia and sites like that got hit really hard too.

I'll post real data later for anyone who wants to see. I'm collecting as much as I can right now.

 

[myk33]

Thanks for this, will be nice to know what lind of link building and what sources are now the most powerful for optimizing for google now. Over time this will be clear but something we all want now!

 

[Monrox]

Editorial links and from comments on reputed online shops.

 

[moneyspinner]

Following this thread to see the results.
Saw few results that you posted in this thread -- http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/blackhat-lounge/283073-google-changes-algoritm.html

 

[dannyhw]

Some more results and my data file.

There is still lots of speculation going on about the ?farmer update? that has taken place over the past few days. I?m not quite certain how it works, but I?ve mined a significant amount of SERP data and things have definitely been shaken up.

To analyze the effects of the update, I first mined a large set of data based on SERPs from both google.com and google.ca. Because the update has been implemented in the USA and not Canada, we can compare these two sources and look for discrepancies in ranking. It?s not perfect, but any significant difference can give us a clue as to what is going on.

First, I created a simple SQL table to store the following fields

keyword
domain
rank on google.ca (rank without the update)
rank on google.com (rank with the update)
So far, I have about 60,000 records in this table. From this table, I was able to query data about the differences in SERPs as they apply to domains across all available keywords. The report I generated had the following fields

domain
number of SERPs analyzed for this domain
total difference in rank (sum of all old ranks ? sum of all new ranks)
average difference in rank (total difference / number of SERPs)
If there is a significant average difference in rank for a domain, we can assume that the domain was affected by the update. Several trends are apparent based on the data.

Article Directories Have Been Devalued Significantly

ezinearticles.com lost an average of 34 positions
hubpages.com lost an average of 31 positions
squidoo.com lost an average of 15 positions
articlesbase.com lost an average of 29 positions
buzzle.com lost an average of 30 positions
associatedcontent.com lost an average of 22 positions
suite101.com lost an average of 33 positions

This trend continues across all article directory type sites without exception. For any given keyword that a page on an article directory was ranking for, it moved down the list roughly 30 positions. This is bad news for the article directories and the people who rely on them.

Established ECommerce Sites Did Well

etsy.com gained an average of 29 positions
amazon.com gained an average of 20 positions
ebay.com gained an average of 20 positions
sears.com gained an average of 29 positions

I will be analyzing the list in more detail to try to draw some conclusions. The results are pretty clear, but the mechanism behind the update is still a mystery.

 

[Anon752]

Great data. This needs to be mined, studied, analyzed and generally figured out.

 

[dannyhw]

Well I don't know how it works really, just trying to take the first step by picking out some trends.

 

[dichotom]

Thank you for this, awesome idea and implementation, looking forward to updates!

 

[diegol]

How do you people affect this?
Autobloggers? Article Marketers??

Great Info!

 

[tygrus]

How bad is dupe content getting hit now? Is there a true penalty now?

 

[Anon752]

How bad is dupe content getting hit now? Is there a true penalty now?

The sites that I have that do indeed have dupe content all dropped a LOT. So I would have to say there is now a real dupe penalty now. Or something very close to it.

 

[iseegreen]

it actually is a huge opportunity to take over from sites that have been outranking you for some of the harder terms - sucks for the guys who were at the top - but for newer sites if they can adjust quickly

then all should be good.

autoblogs took advantage of static sites who did nothing to really provide content - and outranked them by doing that

now you are going to need to tweak these things to be really different - I'm sure there is a way to do that without making it all manual work

the one thing that hits me straight away is this - forget building links to anything below PR2 - because that just says SPAM - and since they are looking for it now - best not to play into their hands and out your sites.

 

[ivictus]

My question is even though article directories are not ranking high them selves are they still good for backlinks to push an original content site to the top?

 

[frenchboy]

Good info, I saw only slight positive changes for my website so that's great news for me .

 

[SEO20]

A lot of forums are getting better results after this - hint hint.

 

[bigbag]

Awesome analysis, dannyw.

Keep up the updates.

 

[ankur420420]

My question is even though article directories are not ranking high them selves are they still good for backlinks to push an original content site to the top?

I am also looking for an answer to this

 

[dannyhw]

When the page is valued, the amount of link juice it can pass is devalued. You'll just have to experiment and see how big of an impact the devaluation has on your link building efforts. It's going to count for something, but might not be worth all the content creation and submission work anymore.

 

[littlewebdragon]

A lot of forums are getting better results after this - hint hint.

ScrapeBoard will go out with ability to post on forums... >:->

 

[Joak]

A lot of forums are getting better results after this - hint hint.

If forums really gained, then let me add to your hint: Looks like 500 bucks are coming out of my pocket soon lol