On 24th February 2011 Google announced on their blog that major changes were afoot. The change described by Google as;<\/p>\n
\u201cwe launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking\u2014a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries\u2014and we wanted to let people know what\u2019s going on.\u201d (Google Blog)<\/p>\n
So what does it mean for us in New Zealand? Nothing yet \u2013 it will only affect the US initially, although it will be rolled out more comprehensively in the future. If it was being rolled out to New Zealand now it would likely not affect well optimised websites.<\/p>\n
The purpose of the algorithm change is to reduce the rankings of websites that are perceived to be of lower quality.<\/p>\n
This will include websites that copy\/gather all their content from other sources rather than providing fresh useful content. This will therefore also benefit perceived high quality websites, such as those that regularly update their website with high quality, original, well-researched and informative content.<\/p>\n
To those that follow the happenings in the world of search, the change does not come as a major surprise. Matt Cutts (Head of Google\u2019s webspam team) commented in his blog that Google that there were looking at targeting \u2018content farms\u2019 with low quality content.<\/p>\n
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