Google Quality Algorithm Update

[douglaskarr]

I'm curious what correlations or impacting variables SEO professionals have found that have increased or decreased ranking with the most recent algorithm change. It appears that many innocent sites have fallen victim, especially larger sites. It also appears that Google is maintaining that specific sites were not targeted... Meaning there must be proven characteristics.

[RealSelf]

We've seen a significant decrease in google.com traffic for stem query terms like [botox] and [invisalign].  We have an active community with tens of thousands of cosmetic treatment reviews, photos and Q&A, so we're not a shallow scraper site.

I don't think we've been specifically punished.  Instead, it looks like Google simply reset the difficulty of competing for commercial stem query terms back to what it was in 2008.  I looked at google traffic by keyword between the end of February 2009 and the last few days, and it seemed clear that our overall traffic has increased significantly but most of that traffic has been for long tail searches.  Traffic for stem query terms are generally flat or down.

In January and early February, we were ranking on page 1 for many of those commercial stem query terms for the first time, but it looks like those days are over.

[saibose]

Douglas,

Actually, I was reading up a few articles on the same topic and I came across these. They may help you better understand what the update was like.

How innocent websites were targeted:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-farmer-update-harmed-codependent-site-owners/28248/

Search Engine Land's view:

http://searchengineland.com/google-trying-to-minimize-collateral-damage-from-farmer-update-66495

It seems that websites with large amount of user content which were not very tightly moderated fell prey to this update. As with all algorithms, this update has its share of problems.

One is still to understand why ehow wasnt penalized whereas websites like business.com were.

One thing is for sure:

Do not stuff keywords into your content for SEO

dont put up low quality content

post only original content sueful to real users

#solve all faceted navigation issues (which is largely a problem of large ecommerce websites)

[douglaskarr]

This is the general advice that I continue to see that doesn't have any definition whatsoever... 1. What is keyword stuffing as defined by this algorithm change and compared to actual search results that have been promoted or demoted? 2. How can Google possibly define quality without investigating and rooting out specific domains... Which they insist they are not doing? 3. Define useful and not useful in a quantitative manner that Google can measure? 4. Navigation issues impacted sites before the change? Are you saying navigation issues (404s?) have MORE of an impact since?

[douglaskarr]

So is the solution for stem queries to attack offsite with increased relevant, promoted content? Or is it also 'fattening' relevant content on page?