6 ms·

Which websites dropped the most in the latest Google algorithm change?

80 points by mitultiwari 16y ago

jrnkntl 16y ago
There it is, Mahalo (14), a drop of 84%. Justice.
- axod 16y ago
  Went to look at their stats on quantcast. They've hidden them! Wonder why... http://quantcast.com/mahalo.com http://quantcast.com/mahalo.com
  - mkr-hn 16y ago
    Were they open before the change?
    - sahillavingia 16y ago
      Yes.
      - spolsky 16y ago
        No, they weren't. I've been watching for a while and they've been hidden from Quantcast for months.
        keiferski 16y ago
        I can attest to this as well. I checked mahalo's quantcast a few weeks ago and it was hidden.
        shareme 16y ago
        12 months ago they were open as I did follow the trend of what happens in atypical Mahalo JC pivot before and after..
    - spolsky 16y ago
      No.
- bconway 16y ago
  What's the animosity against Mahalo? I looked at it years ago when it first started, have they degenerated into a content farm since then?
  - whakojacko 16y ago
    Yes.
  - corin_ 16y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433676 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433676 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1073723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1073723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2128170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2128170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439043 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439043 I think it's pretty widely accepted (especially here on HN) that what Mahalo is doing doesn't benefit anyone except themselves.
Matt_Cutts 16y ago
http://www.sistrix.com/blog/985-google-farmer-update-quest-for-quality.html http://www.sistrix.com/blog/985-google-farmer-update-quest-f... and http://searchengineland.com/who-lost-in-googles-farmer-algorithm-change-66173 http://searchengineland.com/who-lost-in-googles-farmer-algor... are other links I've seen. Bear in mind that much of this third-party analysis compares e.g. US queries vs. queries against Google from Canada, Italy, or India, and geolocation can change the results. Also, different people are running different sets of queries and that subsampling can skew things depending on the query sets. Please bear those disclaimers in mind with any third-party analysis.
- zone411 16y ago
  Matt, I've seen some high quality smaller sites (Internet versions of traditionally published books with original content) drop as well. Is there any place to submit such sites in order to help this algorithm improve?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - zone411 16y ago
    Looking through this list of larger sites that dropped, I see one that is similar to the sites I'm talking about, so more people might be able to say what happened: findarticles.com. I have no relation to this site (it is actually a competitor), but I believe the vast majority of its content is licensed versions of articles published by real books, magazines, and newspapers (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/an_1/?browse=A&tag=content;col1 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/an_1/?browse=A&tag=co...). It seems to have dropped just as much as content mills with low quality articles, such as ezinearticles.com or articlesbase.com. It is possible that I don't know something about findarticles, but this makes it appear like this algorithm change is looking at some superficial common factors and is unable to really distinguish high quality sites from low quality sites.
    - jonknee 16y ago
      > licensed versions of articles published by real books, magazines, and newspapers That makes it sound like Find Articles is quite likely to have a lot of duplicate content, one of the things that Google's update was meant to penalize: > 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.
jhuckestein 16y ago
Please edit the title. "Which websites dropped the most in the latest Google algorithm change? - Quora" reads as though the answer to the question is Quora.
- ComputerGuru 16y ago
  I think that's subjective.. I had no problem understanding the title as the poster intended.
  - ramchip 16y ago
    Of course, it is subjective, but that's the point. I understood the same thing as jhuckestein.
    - gwern 16y ago
      I wouldn't've clicked if I hadn't understood it that way - I don't really care about the sites that dropped, but I know Quora has decent content and if it was the most penalized, that's a huge problem with those Google changes!
  - ahlatimer 16y ago
    Fair enough, but the domain is already shown next to the submitted link on HN. It might not confuse you, but it apparently confused other people, and it's really redundant information anyway.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - forensic 16y ago
    headlines dependent on subjective interpretation = bad
- solipsist 16y ago
  Agreed. Taken from HN's Guidelines: If the original title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link anyway.
mkr-hn 16y ago
It took me about 7 articles on AC before I realized Google would eventually catch up with the content farms. That's also the same time I recognized the problem I was contributing to. Happened a lot sooner than I expected though. :) ETA: On the plus side, my articles should make the cut if they go on a purge to raise the quality level.
vaksel 16y ago
anyone else really surprised that ehow isn't on that list? I mean seriously they are some of the worst offenders I've seen.
- forgotusername 16y ago
  As a single live-alone late 20s male, I do not understand this position. eHow's content often seems perfectly tailored to people like me (I suck at cooking, carpet stain removal, calcium buildup removal, ..., all questions I've found perfectly satisfactory answers to via eHow). In the meantime I'm deeply disappointed to see that the collateral damage of a change largely driven by a problem I don't understand includes faqs.org losing most of its ranking.
  - vaksel 16y ago
    my problem with eHow is that it's very common to search for: "how to do X" And get Google results with eHow as #1 with title: "How to do X" And when you click it, you get..."you can't do X" When in reality you actually can do X...all you have to do is hit #2 result for a forum to find out how. Granted these were usually automotive questions...but still...the fact that eHow outranks legitimate sources with BS 1 paragraph of wordy text should qualify for penalizing them in the rankings.
  - jeffreyrusso 16y ago
    I half agree with you. I think everyone loves to hate eHow, but it has its place in answering seemingly common sense questions. For queries like the ones you mentioned, I'd say that Demand Media's usual line about "filling in the gaps" on the web is somewhat true. My qualm is that eHow often outranks much better content in places where their basic step by step articles don't deserve to be ranked. This is an example I've cited before... the two eHow articles with highly relevant titles don't deserve a spot above the state department's great resource that I see as #3. (Unfortunately, the state.gov site has a crummy title tag that isn't doing it much good.) http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=how+to+renew+an+expired+passport&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGLL_enUS382US382&ie=UTF-8 http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=how+to+renew+an+expir...
  - 16y ago
jonpaul 16y ago
I really don't get much utility out of Mahalo, but why would it drop in this algorithm change? Isn't the site like a wikipedia for search results?
- jonknee 16y ago
  Used to be. Now it's just a content farm. It has been a few different things, none of them useful.
jmtame 16y ago
I would be interested in the flip side. Which sites stand to gain from the algorithm changes? Wikipedia? Stack Overflow? Yelp?
- jdp23 16y ago
  Great question, I'd love to know that too.
- orijing 16y ago
  Great question. My first instinct would be that none of the gains are as dramatic as the drops. Basically this change gets rid of most of the negative outliers.
andrewljohnson 16y ago
It will be interesting to see how JCalcanis spins this. Last I heard he was congratulating Google on going after the content farms and changing their algorithms, claiming Mahalo had superior original content. Assuming these stats aren't totally bunk, something's gotta change in that statement to avoid massive cognitive dissonance.
- shareme 16y ago
  No, you have never seen the Jason Calacanis Reality Distortion Field in action..
ThomPete 16y ago
is it somehow possible to put that list into the chrome block list plugin?
- jonknee 16y ago
  I have most of those and a lot more in a list of content farms I compiled. There are links provided to speed along adding them to your block list: http://www.jongales.com/blog/2011/02/14/list-of-content-farms/ http://www.jongales.com/blog/2011/02/14/list-of-content-farm...
Xuzz 16y ago
Somewhat ironic: AllBusiness, which is #25 on that list, has a relatively high-quality (non-content-farm) post that praises this exact change: http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/software-services-applications-internet-social/15479951-1.html http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/software-services-appl...

80 points by mitultiwari 16y ago

jrnkntl 16y ago

There it is, Mahalo (14), a drop of 84%. Justice.

axod 16y ago
Went to look at their stats on quantcast. They've hidden them! Wonder why... http://quantcast.com/mahalo.com http://quantcast.com/mahalo.com
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  Were they open before the change?
  - sahillavingia 16y ago
    Yes.
    - spolsky 16y ago
      No, they weren't. I've been watching for a while and they've been hidden from Quantcast for months.
      - keiferski 16y ago
        I can attest to this as well. I checked mahalo's quantcast a few weeks ago and it was hidden.
      - shareme 16y ago
        12 months ago they were open as I did follow the trend of what happens in atypical Mahalo JC pivot before and after..
  - spolsky 16y ago
    No.
bconway 16y ago
What's the animosity against Mahalo? I looked at it years ago when it first started, have they degenerated into a content farm since then?
- whakojacko 16y ago
  Yes.
- corin_ 16y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433676 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433676 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1073723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1073723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2128170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2128170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439043 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439043 I think it's pretty widely accepted (especially here on HN) that what Mahalo is doing doesn't benefit anyone except themselves.

Matt_Cutts 16y ago

http://www.sistrix.com/blog/985-google-farmer-update-quest-for-quality.html http://www.sistrix.com/blog/985-google-farmer-update-quest-f... and http://searchengineland.com/who-lost-in-googles-farmer-algorithm-change-66173 http://searchengineland.com/who-lost-in-googles-farmer-algor... are other links I've seen. Bear in mind that much of this third-party analysis compares e.g. US queries vs. queries against Google from Canada, Italy, or India, and geolocation can change the results. Also, different people are running different sets of queries and that subsampling can skew things depending on the query sets. Please bear those disclaimers in mind with any third-party analysis.

zone411 16y ago
Matt, I've seen some high quality smaller sites (Internet versions of traditionally published books with original content) drop as well. Is there any place to submit such sites in order to help this algorithm improve?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- zone411 16y ago
  Looking through this list of larger sites that dropped, I see one that is similar to the sites I'm talking about, so more people might be able to say what happened: findarticles.com. I have no relation to this site (it is actually a competitor), but I believe the vast majority of its content is licensed versions of articles published by real books, magazines, and newspapers (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/an_1/?browse=A&tag=content;col1 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/an_1/?browse=A&tag=co...). It seems to have dropped just as much as content mills with low quality articles, such as ezinearticles.com or articlesbase.com. It is possible that I don't know something about findarticles, but this makes it appear like this algorithm change is looking at some superficial common factors and is unable to really distinguish high quality sites from low quality sites.
  - jonknee 16y ago
    > licensed versions of articles published by real books, magazines, and newspapers That makes it sound like Find Articles is quite likely to have a lot of duplicate content, one of the things that Google's update was meant to penalize: > 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.

jhuckestein 16y ago

Please edit the title. "Which websites dropped the most in the latest Google algorithm change? - Quora" reads as though the answer to the question is Quora.

ComputerGuru 16y ago
I think that's subjective.. I had no problem understanding the title as the poster intended.
- ramchip 16y ago
  Of course, it is subjective, but that's the point. I understood the same thing as jhuckestein.
  - gwern 16y ago
    I wouldn't've clicked if I hadn't understood it that way - I don't really care about the sites that dropped, but I know Quora has decent content and if it was the most penalized, that's a huge problem with those Google changes!
- ahlatimer 16y ago
  Fair enough, but the domain is already shown next to the submitted link on HN. It might not confuse you, but it apparently confused other people, and it's really redundant information anyway.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- forensic 16y ago
  headlines dependent on subjective interpretation = bad
solipsist 16y ago
Agreed. Taken from HN's Guidelines: If the original title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link anyway.

mkr-hn 16y ago

It took me about 7 articles on AC before I realized Google would eventually catch up with the content farms. That's also the same time I recognized the problem I was contributing to. Happened a lot sooner than I expected though. :) ETA: On the plus side, my articles should make the cut if they go on a purge to raise the quality level.

vaksel 16y ago

anyone else really surprised that ehow isn't on that list? I mean seriously they are some of the worst offenders I've seen.

forgotusername 16y ago
As a single live-alone late 20s male, I do not understand this position. eHow's content often seems perfectly tailored to people like me (I suck at cooking, carpet stain removal, calcium buildup removal, ..., all questions I've found perfectly satisfactory answers to via eHow). In the meantime I'm deeply disappointed to see that the collateral damage of a change largely driven by a problem I don't understand includes faqs.org losing most of its ranking.
- vaksel 16y ago
  my problem with eHow is that it's very common to search for: "how to do X" And get Google results with eHow as #1 with title: "How to do X" And when you click it, you get..."you can't do X" When in reality you actually can do X...all you have to do is hit #2 result for a forum to find out how. Granted these were usually automotive questions...but still...the fact that eHow outranks legitimate sources with BS 1 paragraph of wordy text should qualify for penalizing them in the rankings.
- jeffreyrusso 16y ago
  I half agree with you. I think everyone loves to hate eHow, but it has its place in answering seemingly common sense questions. For queries like the ones you mentioned, I'd say that Demand Media's usual line about "filling in the gaps" on the web is somewhat true. My qualm is that eHow often outranks much better content in places where their basic step by step articles don't deserve to be ranked. This is an example I've cited before... the two eHow articles with highly relevant titles don't deserve a spot above the state department's great resource that I see as #3. (Unfortunately, the state.gov site has a crummy title tag that isn't doing it much good.) http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=how+to+renew+an+expired+passport&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGLL_enUS382US382&ie=UTF-8 http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=how+to+renew+an+expir...
- 16y ago

jonpaul 16y ago

I really don't get much utility out of Mahalo, but why would it drop in this algorithm change? Isn't the site like a wikipedia for search results?

jonknee 16y ago
Used to be. Now it's just a content farm. It has been a few different things, none of them useful.

jmtame 16y ago

I would be interested in the flip side. Which sites stand to gain from the algorithm changes? Wikipedia? Stack Overflow? Yelp?

jdp23 16y ago
Great question, I'd love to know that too.
orijing 16y ago
Great question. My first instinct would be that none of the gains are as dramatic as the drops. Basically this change gets rid of most of the negative outliers.

andrewljohnson 16y ago

It will be interesting to see how JCalcanis spins this. Last I heard he was congratulating Google on going after the content farms and changing their algorithms, claiming Mahalo had superior original content. Assuming these stats aren't totally bunk, something's gotta change in that statement to avoid massive cognitive dissonance.

shareme 16y ago
No, you have never seen the Jason Calacanis Reality Distortion Field in action..

ThomPete 16y ago

is it somehow possible to put that list into the chrome block list plugin?

jonknee 16y ago
I have most of those and a lot more in a list of content farms I compiled. There are links provided to speed along adding them to your block list: http://www.jongales.com/blog/2011/02/14/list-of-content-farms/ http://www.jongales.com/blog/2011/02/14/list-of-content-farm...

Xuzz 16y ago

Somewhat ironic: AllBusiness, which is #25 on that list, has a relatively high-quality (non-content-farm) post that praises this exact change: http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/software-services-applications-internet-social/15479951-1.html http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/software-services-appl...