Feb 24th Google Update a Killer? Find out who is hurt and how to fix it...

["J"]

Google has recently updated its algorithm in a number of ways over the past couple of months, primarily targeting content farms and scraper sites. On Feb 24th a pretty big update came out.

Here's the announcement from Google:
Official Google Blog: Finding more high-quality sites in search

A lot of people are reporting changes in their rankings and a loss of traffic, so this could be considered a pretty major update that effects a lot of people.

The Hurt List
So far it seems to be...
- Killing off scraper sites with lots of duplicate content.
- Reducing the rankings of pages which don't have any backlinks (or decent backlinks), especiallly on large sites (think content farms)
- Devaluing the backlinks coming from pages that are dupe content including scraper sites and poorly spun content.

The Love List
So far it seems to be benefiting:
- greyhat/BlueFart sites with crappy content that have lots of backlinks to individual pages
- exact match domais with good backlinks to the homepage
- high quality authority sites where individual pages get lots of natural links
- any page with lots of genuine editorial citations (i.e 100% whitehat backlinks from decent sites)
- any page with lots of quality backlinks that appear more natural to Google

My situation:
What happened after Feb 24th 2011.
Backlinks: True natural backlinks from authority sources
Content: Unique, High Quality. Typically 200-500 words.
Individual Pages Linked: Sometimes, but large amount of pages don't get linked.
Number of Pages on My Sites: Thousands (all unique hand written content from fluent English writers)
Amount of Traffic: Thousands of daily visitors per site.
Other info: Longtail traffic hit the most, seems to be pages that lack backlinks that have suffered. Traffic loss averages 20-30%.

Your Turn...
Please copy this and post your own situation so we can figure out a pattern. Please do this whether things are better, worse or the same for you

My situation:
What happened after Feb 24th 2011.
Backlinks: What type of backlinks?
Content: Quality and uniqueness of content?
Individual Pages Linked: What percentage of individual pages on your site get external backlinks.
Number of Pages on My Sites: 
Amount of Traffic: 
Other info: Traffic lost gain - what sort of pages?

[pjman]

I'm in the same boat. Hardest hit ever.

my situation:
What happened after Feb 24th 2011.
Backlinks: Extremely diverse (Over 2 million links 99% natural; some article links, no spinning, I did about 100 profile links back a few years.)
Content: 13,000+ pages of unique content.
Individual Pages Linked: 60-70% individual page links
Number of Pages on My Sites: 13,000+ and a forum with over 5,000 threads.
Amount of Traffic: 2 Million Monthly
Other info: Across the board all traffic from Google down 70% over night.

[gearmonkey]

My authority, 100% high quality unique content, blog has taken a huge hit. I thought they were going after spam sites that get content from content farms?

The only duplicate content I have is from manufacture official press releases... maybe I'll publish a new press release once per month to update my readers of new guitar products, other than that, the content is 100% unique.

My backlinks come from other blogs, natural forums posts, some youtube, article directories, some old link directories from like 4 years ago, blog comments, profile links... so pretty diverse.

I did some research on a couple of my blog posts that were getting high traffic before the hit, and found some crappy amazon/ebay scrape wordpress blogs stealing my content without giving any link backs.

Maybe that's how Google is resolving this, by punishing original authors who are subject to stolen republished content?

[paulgl]

How about the other side? The sites that have benefited from this?

Don't they have a say? They are rejoicing!

Paul

[gearmonkey]

Originally Posted by paulgl

How about the other side? The sites that have benefited from this?

Don't they have a say? They are rejoicing!

Paul

I'm sure Ebay and Amazon are rejoicing! I've done some research and it looks like they are benefiting from this move.

Oh, and my scrapper autoblog is significantly outranking my 100% unique high quality blog. My scraper is on page 1, 2 and 3 for one keyword. My quality blog moved to page 4.

[paulgl]

Google Gurus:

About 12% of U.S.-based search queries would be affected
(88% NOT affected?)

It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down
(Gee, ya think? Of course the ones going down will be more vocal,
leading people to think everyone is going down)

Let's copy Yogi Berra here. Nobody is getting in search results anymore
because we all took a drop.

Paul

[packjack]

I find all article directories except BUZZLE have lost trust in Google now..

Eg ezinearticle use to rank top 10 for competitive kwrds like "reverse phone lookup", "acai berry" etc but they are not there in spite the pages were back linked heavily..

Time to promote your articles through BUZZLE now.

[MarcG]

My ezinearticles have also dropped in rank too

[Adam H]

Looking through all our stats and all our ranks today ive seen no moves apart from some significant raises in some places as well as some traffic increases in comparison on other fridays of the last two months, its possible the traffic increases are nothing to do with the change what so ever. But either way im happy.

One site that has dropped out of the sky is one that we havent touched for about 6 months , hasnt really got any good content on it and was really only put online ready for a rainy day when we had nothing else to do, So if thats the type of site this change is for then it can only be a good thing.

[iwilsmar]

My situation:

Backlinks: What type of backlinks?

Quality, diverse links built over time, some natural, others built by myself.

Content: Quality and uniqueness of content?

Highly unique and original content, written exclusively by me.

Individual Pages Linked:

About 30% of the tier three pages on my site have no backlinks, but all the important pages do.

Number of Pages on My Sites: Around 800

Amount of Traffic: 6000 uniques a day

Other info: Traffic lost gain - what sort of pages?

After the 24th, uniques dripped from 6K down to 3500.

This despite the fact that my content is all well written, and 100 percent unique.

More than 20 percent of my overall traffic comes from returning visitors, and people don't normally make return trips to garbage websites.

I've breezed through every other google algorithm shift with no damage whatsoever, but this one has been brutal to say the least.

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Google Gurus:

About 12% of U.S.-based search queries would be affected
(88% NOT affected?)

It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down
(Gee, ya think? Of course the ones going down will be more vocal,
leading people to think everyone is going down)

Let's copy Yogi Berra here. Nobody is getting in search results anymore
because we all took a drop.

Paul

If you were playing by all the rules and had a good thing going - but then got displaced by someone who isnt - and lost 30-40% of your daily traffic and sales took a hit - not sure you to wouldnt want to at least try and find out why.

Sorry - this is more than just a trivial disturbance to a quite a few people ... why try to illegitimize or trivialize whats happening?

[hotftuna]

I have seen no change in terms I follow- not even normal daily flux.

[dlfan]

I am seeing changes in my hubpages and things like that, I had some of them in #1 positions and now they are at the bottom of the page or 2nd page

[WealthWithin]

So far I haven't seen a major shift in my sites.

The AdSense revenue was low yesterday, but that was due to reduced CTR & CPC.
The page views stayed the same. Checked today, and the revenue is back up.

Checked few of my main rankings, they're staying the same - no improvement, no loss.

It's still hard to build a connection to see what is exactly effected. And no idea on what's Google's definition of 'shallow' content.


Will be interesting to see how the things change over next few days.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

If you were playing by all the rules and had a good thing going - but then got displaced by someone who isnt - and lost 30-40% of your daily traffic and sales took a hit - not sure you to wouldnt want to at least try and find out why.

I've always played by the rules. My rules. Ones that I gleaned from google,
funny enough, by reading what they preach.

I ALWAYS worried about content, great visitor experience, and getting targeted
traffic on MY OWN. This is exactly how google has always said to do it. Over
time, your content grows, your web footprint grows, your linkbait is tremendous,
pretty soon, your traffic is coming in bunches from all over the place. I could
care less if google changes its algorithms. I suffer not one iota. Google could
close down tomorrow and my traffic would still be quite good.

That's why I have always fought against voodoo SEO, built on nothing but
what people think the google alorithm wants and needs. Not me. I built
websites for people, google algorithm shmoozing be damned.

Paul

[JaySchmidt]

My traffic is up around 15%.

I write long, comprehensive articles that are a one stop shop for information seekers. When they read my page, they don't need to go back to Google and look for other pages; I give them everything they need.

Of course, this means my articles are (in many cases) thousands of words long. But since my biggest site has only around 70 pages indexed, it's not as crazy as it sounds at first.

My links are mostly good, high-quality natural links. But I also create anchor-texted links of my own with blog commenting, article marketing, PAD, and some spam.

My traffic is 90% organic, and highly targeted. For the most part it's long-tail and it converts very well.

My older sites' traffic increased significantly, but my newer sites (I have one that's only 2 months old) also experienced a surprising jump in traffic.

[jimmypate]

My websites are getting well as well. No problems for me.

[Steven Liew]

My websites are not affected as well. White hat SEO is definitely the way to go here.

[garben2011]

The only change I have seen is with some articles and squidoo lenses which have dropped in some cases by several pages. One squidoo lens I've had on page one (#4) since 2009 and it is now on page 2 (#12).

But the cool thing is the pages on my real sites are doing as well as, and some pages are doing even better than, before in the rankings.

One interesting thing is a squidoo lens I had used to test Article Marketing Automation has taken quite a drop. This could be coincidence but I've often wondered why Google doesn't simply have an employee search for backlinking solutions and then join every one of them. Create a little test site and submit to these backlinking rings and then they would easily be able to identify every single site belonging to them. I'm not saying they have done this but it shocks me that they don't do this. I would. Ah well, maybe next update.

[iAmNameLess]

All my sites have received a shot up in the rankings. Some drastic changes for the better. None of my sites have over 100 pages and they all for the most part have some pretty decent backlinking.

[gameutopia]

I haven't seen or noticed anything significant or as major as google suggests with the 11.8% number they quote. It is a fairly large number considering the amount of searches done at google. I really haven't seen too much complaining.

[iAmNameLess]

Originally Posted by gameutopia

I haven't seen or noticed anything significant or as major as google suggests with the 11.8% number they quote. It is a fairly large number considering the amount of searches done at google. I really haven't seen too much complaining.

Click around the forum a lot, many people are complaining lol.

[Black Hat Cat]

Originally Posted by paulgl

That's why I have always fought against voodoo SEO built on nothing but
what people think the google alorithm wants and needs. Not me. I built
websites for people, google algorithm shmoozing be damned.

Paul

And yet you're linking to an electric socks squidoo lens from an internet marketing forum, and using specific keyword text to boot, lol.

[cma01]

Of the keywords I track, my sites either stayed the same or went up. The sites range from little Xfactor styles sites (no green ugliness though) to authority sites. The content on my sites is unique, except for one authority site does publish press releases, which are duplicate. I do all sorts of backlinking.

I don't track or even care how my 2.0 properties or articles rank. My focus is on building up my own sites, not someone else's.

[daxcheng]

My situation:
What happened after Feb 24th 2011.
- Traffic down 30%
- lost a lot of my #1 ranking (that I track). Most of my 1st page rankings went to page 2 and 3
- My main keyword went from #7 to #18

Backlinks: What type of backlinks?
- Mostly organic, some profile (Angela & Paul), some article marketing, some Linkvana

Content: Quality and uniqueness of content?
-100% original and high quality - written by me, quoted by universities

Individual Pages Linked: What percentage of individual pages on your site get external backlinks.
- All organically, (I build backlinks to only 10 to 20 individual pages)

Number of Pages on My Sites: 200+

Amount of Traffic: around 4,000 uniques a day (before update)

Other info: Traffic lost gain - what sort of pages?
- looks like lost for now but I have experienced this before in 2006

Actually, this was what I said in another forum in July 2006

Looks like everyone is getting hit....

I lost almost all my traffic from the big G (used to get 1K per day from them... now got only 26 for this month!!!) Painfull man....

So, I know this is only a temporary situation. Just keep working.

[Tallguy83]

I think the effects is probably temporary.If not....we have to learn play by the new rules