Google has announced a major change to its search engine today, essentially subtle and more than likely unnoticeable to many users, it's a change that should dramatically improve the quality of Google's search results.
Google has essentially declared war on content farms - these are created to gain a better Google ranking. They are low quality sites whose main goal is to attract search traffic by piling up useless content, usually by either producing large amounts of low-quality text or by copying it from websites with original content.
Google does not go into detail on the change, which will impact 11.8% of Google's queries (currently only in the US, with plans to roll it out elsewhere over time), but it does say that it will affect the ranking of many sites on the web.
"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," explain Google’s Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts in a blog post.
The popularity of Google's search engine is still second to none, but Google has been plagued by black hat SEO practices and content farms for a while now, with the complaints from users slowly mounting over time.
So Spring is round the corner and Google is planning a good ‘ol clean out and we should see Google ranking sites in way that is fair for everyone – we think this is a sensible move.