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New ezinearticles guidelines effective immediately

by droog
233 replies
Quality Matters


"Quality Matters

We are not stating anything new when we say that quality matters in your articles.

It does.

It always has.

The end user-experience is important to us and should be to you. The value you provide in your articles matters since it's not only an investment in your future as a credible author, it's an investment of time to your reader. Getting traffic today isn't worth the cost if your reader quickly realizes that you're not in it to help them - that your intent was selfish - and they're gone as quickly as they came.

In an effort to help you succeed even more as an expert author in your niche, we'll be moving forward with 5 changes that will be effective immediately. This is round one.

Effective Immediately:

1. Increased Quality Checks - We've doubled the review time per article that our Editors are allowed to focus on format, grammar, spelling, and consistency.

2. WP Plugin and API - We will no longer be accepting article submissions via these tools.

3. Deadlink /Link Diagnostic Center - If your article contained a dead link, we previously would unlink it within 35 days of your first notification and send you 5 notifications to encourage you to fix it. This process will change and if after 2 weeks your link has not been fixed, we will unlink it. You can always edit your article at a future time to update your link.

4. Basic Plus Membership level - You were previously allotted 25 article submissions in this membership level if you did not meet the Platinum membership requirements at the end of your first 10 article submissions. This level was established to help you gain the additional experience and understanding to achieve the Platinum level (quality with quantity). What seemingly occurred was a vicious cycle of the continuous adding of 25 submissions if you still did not meet the requirements. This is no longer effective.

The standard 25 now becomes 10. We've done this so that we can monitor your progress more efficiently and help coach you on what it will take to earn Platinum. It also weeds out those who fail to or unwilling to learn. If after those 10 additional submissions we feel that you are not gaining momentum, you will not be allotted any more submissions and we will no longer accept future article submissions from you. Your value in using our platform is to increase the effectiveness of your writing. While not always an easy feat for non-writers, we all need to learn.

5. New Minimum 400 Word Count - We've been talking about this for a few years now and made the decision that effective immediately, we've increased the minimum word count to 400. While we know that we run the risk of frustrating a few experienced high quality authors who can write well in fewer words, we feel that it is the best choice to make. We have not discounted the fact that quality can come in 250-399 words and we are working on an idea that spawned four years ago (but never became live) where we'll offer another membership level and reward those authors who define the high standards of quality. In fact, along with other amenities, this membership level will be hypersensitive to quality and NOT quantity. More on that will be discussed in the following weeks.

For now, these are the changes that will immediately be going into effect. Watch this Blog in the coming days and weeks for more information."
#effective #ezinearticles #guidelines #immediately
  • Profile picture of the author Zeus66
    And so it begins. Google slapped EZA hard by all accounts. Huge loss of rankings. That means less traffic and less money for them. So this is their response. Overall, I think it's a wise move. Beats taking it lying down.

    John
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    • Profile picture of the author Ralph Moore
      Thanks for the update.

      Personally, I am very glad to see this. There is a difference between writing and writing valuable content rich articles.
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      • Profile picture of the author bretski
        They've been running these "hundred articles in hundred days" things a lot and I'm sure that some garbage slipped through but do they really know why google slapped them? I mean, I think it's funny as hell that my dinky article directory outranks EZA but this happens to many sites, doesn't it? And what to do we all suggest when someone comes to WF crying because google gave them the smack down? "Just keep on doing what you're doing and you will rise to the top again. Take your beating like a man"
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        • Profile picture of the author CatherineC
          Banned
          Originally Posted by bretski View Post

          They've been running these "hundred articles in hundred days" things a lot and I'm sure that some garbage slipped through but do they really know why google slapped them? I mean, I think it's funny as hell that my dinky article directory outranks EZA but this happens to many sites, doesn't it? And what to do we all suggest when someone comes to WF crying because google gave them the smack down? "Just keep on doing what you're doing and you will rise to the top again. Take your beating like a man"
          Good post. But "some" slipping through isn't accurate.

          Go to the main page and read every article posted that's live. It doesn't take long.

          As you go, mark a "yes" for those articles that answered the question that was proposed in the headline. Mark a "no" for those that didn't.

          Once you look at that list when you've gone through them, scale that up to over 2M+ articles the past 24 months, and you'll understand EXACTLY why EZA and most of the 2.0 sites were correctly slapped.

          80% of the articles posted, are crap.

          Not gramatically, or functionally, but in terms of "do they provide helpful information for the problem I searched to solve".

          Crap.

          Just too many of:

          "Are you looking to lose weight fast? Well you are in the right place my friend, as I am going to show you fast ways to lose weight fast. First, let me tell you what it's like to be fat..."

          go for 300 words about why being fat blows...then:

          "So that's why it's bad to be fat. If you want to be thin click this link and learn more about losing fat"

          lol, just awful, a total "pre-sell" pitch (and a poor one at that) as taught by most article-marketing WSO sellers on this very board.

          What a joke, and EZA has no one but themselves to blame here. Between the whoring of articles for purely backlink reasons combined with content that simply doesn't offer the answer to the search query that was posed, it's no wonder they're in trouble.
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          • Profile picture of the author H.Miller
            Originally Posted by CatherineC View Post

            Good post. But "some" slipping through isn't accurate.

            Go to the main page and read every article posted that's live. It doesn't take long.

            As you go, mark a "yes" for those articles that answered the question that was proposed in the headline. Mark a "no" for those that didn't.

            Once you look at that list when you've gone through them, scale that up to over 2M+ articles the past 24 months, and you'll understand EXACTLY why EZA and most of the 2.0 sites were correctly slapped.

            80% of the articles posted, are crap.

            Not gramatically, or functionally, but in terms of "do they provide helpful information for the problem I searched to solve".

            Crap.

            Just too many of:

            "Are you looking to lose weight fast? Well you are in the right place my friend, as I am going to show you fast ways to lose weight fast. First, let me tell you what it's like to be fat..."

            go for 300 words about why being fat blows...then:

            "So that's why it's bad to be fat. If you want to be thin click this link and learn more about losing fat"

            lol, just awful, a total "pre-sell" pitch (and a poor one at that) as taught by most article-marketing WSO sellers on this very board.

            What a joke, and EZA has no one but themselves to blame here. Between the whoring of articles for purely backlink reasons combined with content that simply doesn't offer the answer to the search query that was posed, it's no wonder they're in trouble.
            Totally agree with everything you just said. EZA had a ton of articles that were just pure junk. That's why I am glad Google made these changes. It should actually help those of us who have been writing valuable content all the time.

            I think this move will help eliminate all the spinning of articles that seems to go on quite a bit these days.
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            • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
              Originally Posted by H.Miller View Post

              Totally agree with everything you just said. EZA had a ton of articles that were just pure junk. That's why I am glad Google made these changes. It should actually help those of us who have been writing valuable content all the time.

              I think this move will help eliminate all the spinning of articles that seems to go on quite a bit these days.
              Despite the slow incline in earnings (as opposed to fast and rapid), this is exactly why it is imperative to ensure quality from the get go. The general nature of these sites depend on the forsight and wisdom of the owners--understanding, what I had mentioned earlier in this thread....that Google has essentially laid out EXACTLY what it wants in content for years. Now, the downside is that the COLLECTIVE suffer, in terms of decreased traffic/authority, when people exploit the site for their own personal gain.

              IMHO, EZA or any site, have an obligation to YOU, H.Miller, and everyone else who has made a habit of supplying high quality content, to safeguard your time invested by ensuring the integrity of their platform by PROACTIVELY weeding out those who would exploit it.

              There appears to be redemption, however, in accordance with the list I had posted earlier, WHY did it take this long?
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Originally Posted by Zeus66 View Post

      And so it begins. Google slapped EZA hard by all accounts. Huge loss of rankings. That means less traffic and less money for them. So this is their response. Overall, I think it's a wise move. Beats taking it lying down.

      John
      Yes they did...

      And...THESE too...

      Google Farmer Update: Quest for Quality - SEO-Blog
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    • Profile picture of the author spectrecom
      Originally Posted by Zeus66 View Post

      And so it begins. Google slapped EZA hard by all accounts. Huge loss of rankings. That means less traffic and less money for them. So this is their response. Overall, I think it's a wise move. Beats taking it lying down.

      John
      Yeah, good on EZA. I think they've be lumped in with a lot of very poor quality sites, their standards are pretty high. Not fair really, they have responded very well.

      Websites need Google.
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      • Profile picture of the author wordwizard
        I won't have to change too much since I've been submitting 400+ word articles for ages (so they qualify for "most viewed" and HAHD contests.

        And I try to keep the quality high too...

        I did notice yesterday that an article I submitted for a client came back as supposed "duplicate content" and then I rewrote it completely and it STILL came back duplicate content.

        Considering that I've been writing dozens of articles on a fairly narrow niche, this wasn't too surprising. While I write all those articles completely from scratch, how many ways can you describe how a certain gadget works and what you can use it for and the key criteria for selecting it...

        And when a friend sent me the article about Google's demoting EZA and co, I thought, oh that's what it was!

        It'll be interesting to see how soon EZA gets back into Google's good graces...

        Elisabeth
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  • Profile picture of the author CatherineC
    Banned
    Wish they would have gone further, but IMers talked them off of the NOFOLLOW cliff with their incessant whining and crying about how they "deserve" it.

    Until they make that change they'll still be the target of 2.0 backlinkers, and nothing will change.

    Glad to see they'll be terminating Basic Plus members who don't make the grade however, as that will make Platinum level accounts have much more value when reselling them.

    The bottom line is that Google targetted specific sites for a reason, and their new level of presence in search results is likely where they'll remain regardless of any changes they make.
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    • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
      Banned
      Originally Posted by CatherineC View Post

      Wish they would have gone further, but IMers talked them off of the NOFOLLOW cliff with their incessant whining and crying about how they "deserve" it.

      Until they make that change they'll still be the target of 2.0 backlinkers, and nothing will change.
      Maybe they didn't make that change because they actually like people providing them with free content, which would likely end for the most part if they ever do go no follow.

      I've never been a fan of EA, but frankly, the way they and others have been singled out and targeted by Google sucks. This wasn't the result of any algorithm change, it was the result of Google going through and manually picking winners and losers because...well, just because. That's why youtube, which just happens to be a Google property, improved it's standing, despite putting out as much, if not more crap than anyone else, not to mention the massive amount of copyright violations that occur there.

      Back to EA, I wonder, in the new spirit of being unselfish, if they will be removing all the Adsense ads they have plastered all over their site?
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      • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
        Originally Posted by Black Hat Cat View Post

        Maybe they didn't make that change because they actually like people providing them with free content, which would likely end for the most part if they ever do go no follow.

        I've never been a fan of EA, but frankly, the way they and others have been singled out and targeted by Google sucks. This wasn't the result of any algorithm change, it was the result of Google going through and manually picking winners and losers because...well, just because. That's why youtube, which just happens to be a Google property, improved it's standing, despite putting out as much, if not more crap than anyone else, not to mention the massive amount of copyright violations that occur there.

        Back to EA, I wonder, in the new spirit of being unselfish, if they will be removing all the Adsense ads they have plastered all over their site?
        Wouldn't count on it.

        With a premium adsense account, they'll still make more than had they used, say Chitika.

        Plus, with a premium adsense account, they've already negotiated increased revenue share directly with Google...plus, about 10 other benefits that would make it against their best interest to remove Adsense ads.
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      • Profile picture of the author techdiva
        Originally Posted by Black Hat Cat View Post

        Maybe they didn't make that change because they actually like people providing them with free content, which would likely end for the most part if they ever do go no follow.

        I've never been a fan of EA, but frankly, the way they and others have been singled out and targeted by Google sucks. This wasn't the result of any algorithm change, it was the result of Google going through and manually picking winners and losers because...well, just because. That's why youtube, which just happens to be a Google property, improved it's standing, despite putting out as much, if not more crap than anyone else, not to mention the massive amount of copyright violations that occur there.

        Back to EA, I wonder, in the new spirit of being unselfish, if they will be removing all the Adsense ads they have plastered all over their site?
        Black Hat Cat,

        YouTube was overlooked in part because Google has to real effective way to search video text or soundtracks or podcasts or any type of video-audio files yet. And because they own it!

        This means you can take the same crap content that would get you slapped if it were TEXT and turn into another format such as videos or audio files.

        Funny now that Google can read PDFs, it g-slapped both slideshare and docstoc too. But it missed Squidoo (who got g-slapped a few years back). Side deal or warning ahead of time?

        Chancer
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      • Profile picture of the author caseycase
        Originally Posted by Black Hat Cat View Post

        Maybe they didn't make that change because they actually like people providing them with free content, which would likely end for the most part if they ever do go no follow.

        I've never been a fan of EA, but frankly, the way they and others have been singled out and targeted by Google sucks. This wasn't the result of any algorithm change, it was the result of Google going through and manually picking winners and losers because...well, just because. That's why youtube, which just happens to be a Google property, improved it's standing, despite putting out as much, if not more crap than anyone else, not to mention the massive amount of copyright violations that occur there.
        Exactly. This was most likely a manual "slap" rather than a real change in algorithm. But hey, that's is Google's prerogative, I guess.

        And, there is no way they will go to nofollow, especially after how many people freaked out when they said that was what they were going to do. Even after Chris said they took that off the table, there were still people who were writing in all caps at him about it. I certainly disliked the idea of them going nofollow, and might have considered taking my new content somewhere else, but the truth is, if your content gets syndicated, you get links anyway (not to mention the debate as to whether nofollow really makes a difference).
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        • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
          Originally Posted by caseycase View Post

          Exactly. This was most likely a manual "slap" rather than a real change in algorithm. But hey, that's is Google's prerogative, I guess.

          And, there is no way they will go to nofollow, especially after how many people freaked out when they said that was what they were going to do. Even after Chris said they took that off the table, there were still people who were writing in all caps at him about it. I certainly disliked the idea of them going nofollow, and might have considered taking my new content somewhere else, but the truth is, if your content gets syndicated, you get links anyway (not to mention the debate as to whether nofollow really makes a difference).
          This will be very difficult to do, but, with the longterm viability of the site at hand, perhaps they could somehow identify and isolate those writers who they deem to have a track record of submitting high quality content...and, either offering them somekind of incentive to continue...and/or thoroughly explain the plight the site is facing a very human and genuine tone.

          If an article sweep must occur, they have to treat people with as much dignity and respect as possible...because its the right thing to do...and, it'll be necessary for their brand.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    400 is not enough.
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    • Profile picture of the author matt5409
      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      400 is not enough.
      of course it is. what a thing to say!
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    • Profile picture of the author CatherineC
      Banned
      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      400 is not enough.
      Hilarious that Chris said they've been debating 400 "for years". :rolleyes:

      Should have pulled that trigger a loooooooooong time ago, could have saved himself the headache that the next year or more will bring to his bottom line rev.

      Even 500 frankly is too low, there's no reason he couldn't go all the way up to a 750 target if "quality" truly is the goal.
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      • Profile picture of the author Britt Malka
        Originally Posted by CatherineC View Post

        Even 500 frankly is too low, there's no reason he couldn't go all the way up to a 750 target if "quality" truly is the goal.
        750 instead of 400 - that sounds more like quantity than quality ;-)

        Some writers master their trade so well that they can write more precisely what others are weaving about and using many words to explain.

        My boss 15 years ago (a solicitor) always wrote short letters, and he put in exactly the same that other would write several pages to explain. He just did it short and precise. The quality would have suffered, if he'd had to put in more words just to reach a limit.

        I like the 400 word limit. It's fine. No need to put in more fluff than necessary.
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    • Profile picture of the author Ernie Mitchell
      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      400 is not enough.
      I couldn't disagree more!

      To quote Pascal, "I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

      If the article directories cave to associating quality content with long content solely to pull their fat out of the fire with Google it will set a precedence that will have far reaching negative ramifications on literature.

      Worse yet, if Google as the gate keeper to the Internet endorses such an action it will be a travesty. The internet is and will continue to be the new face of world literature. To cavalierly adopt a longer only rule flies in the face of quality writing practices.

      I dare say there is more to the internet and the article directories than commercial content. If the scammers and spammers had put half the effort into building a reportable business as they had trying to outsmart the search engines this problem wouldn't exist. Somewhere, above all this, there should be a higher intellectual standard than gaming the system and settling for shallow short term fixes.
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      • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
        What if they could devise a system that incentivized both longer content AND high quality content?

        Originally Posted by Ernie Mitchell View Post

        I couldn't disagree more!

        To quote Pascal, "I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

        If the article directories cave to associating quality content with long content solely to pull their fat out of the fire with Google it will it will set a precedence that will have far reaching negative ramifications on literature.

        Worse yet, if Google as the gate keeper to the Internet endorses such an action it will be a travesty. The internet is and will continue to be the new face of world literature. To cavalierly adopt a longer only rule flies in the face on quality writing practices.

        I dare say there is more to the internet and the article directories than commercial content. If the scammers and spammers had put half the effort into building a reportable business as they had trying to outsmart the search engines this problem wouldn't exist. Somewhere, above all this, there should be a higher intellectual standard than gaming the system and settling for shallow short term fixes.
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  • Profile picture of the author Zeus66
    I think 400 is enough. 250 was silly, but 400 is just enough to get a really good bit of content out there. Still, it's not really about numbers, but I know why they're doing this.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      250 words was certainly silly: it suited a type of so-called article marketing which EZA should never have been tolerating. With only a slight residual feeling of "too little, too late", I welcome all these changes, anyway.

      I agree with Catherine that EZA have themselves to blame, largely.

      The way forward with article marketing is - as it has been since the day I started - to avoid over-dependency on (a) article directories, and (b) Google.
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      • Profile picture of the author TimG
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        250 words was certainly silly: it suited a type of so-called article marketing which EZA should never have been tolerating. With only a slight residual feeling of "too little, too late", I welcome all these changes, anyway.

        I agree with Catherine that EZA have themselves to blame, largely.

        The way forward with article marketing is - as it has been since the day I started - to avoid over-dependency on (a) article directories, and (b) Google.
        In my eyes 250 words has always been a blog post and not what I would consider an article. With their new minimum of 400 I intend to focus on creating high quality content in the 500-600 word range.

        Meeting the minimum standards should never be anyone's goal - it should always be to exceed the standards or even better...to set the standards.

        Respectfully,
        Tim
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        • Profile picture of the author MarkWrites
          Originally Posted by TimG View Post

          Meeting the minimum standards should never be anyone's goal - it should always be to exceed the standards or even better...to set the standards.
          Masterfully said!
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          • Profile picture of the author Kay King
            I wouldn't be surprised to see all the articles in some categories removed - and the categories as well. Would be an improvement in some cases.

            I think the shortest article I've submitted to EZA was just over 500 words - most are 650-800. The longer articles don't make the flashy numbers at first - but I've found they are syndicated more often and yield results over a longer term.

            kay
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        • Profile picture of the author tpw
          [DELETED]
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          • Profile picture of the author TimG
            Originally Posted by tpw View Post

            Out of Thanks buttons...
            Don't sweat it Bill.....I'll let you buy me a beer sometime in the future.

            Respectfully,
            Tim
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        • Profile picture of the author smwordsmith
          I certainly welcome the change that Google's new algorithm has ignited. There are a lot of poorly written EZA articles.

          How nice of EZA to 'allow' their editors more time to do a decent job on the article reviews.
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        • Profile picture of the author HigherPrThanGod
          I still maintain Google is slowly killing its search. In a few years Bing will be every bit as (in)accurate as Google. They're killing themselves slowly in an effort to police everything.

          But I could be wrong.. :p
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          • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
            Originally Posted by HigherPrThanGod View Post

            I still maintain Google is slowly killing its search. In a few years Bing will be every bit as (in)accurate as Google. They're killing themselves slowly in an effort to police everything.

            But I could be wrong.. :p
            How so? :p

            Don't you think they'd be "killing themselves" more, if they simply sat down and let SEO'ers continue to manipulate the hell out of their rankings, whilst their competitors perfect and hone their algorithms and systems to provide users with a measurably better experience?

            Yes they're p*ssing off a lot of people with these algorithm tweaks, but Google aren't there to serve us - even if it can be argued that "ethical SEO'ers" are helping Google match up search queries with relevant content. For every "ethical" individual doing this - those who make sure that whatever content they publish will provide some value - there are hundreds or thousands more who care not for the experience or impression they give the end-user.

            Google can't afford to sit on its laurels. Because all the while they do, their competitors steal away their market-share.

            In other words, I don't for a second believe they're doing this "just because they can". They're doing it because they need to.
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            • Profile picture of the author HigherPrThanGod
              Originally Posted by DireStraits View Post

              How so? :p

              Don't you think they'd be "killing themselves" more, if they simply sat down and let SEO'ers continue to manipulate the hell out of their rankings, whilst their competitors perfect and hone their algorithms and systems to provide users with a measurably better experience?

              Yes they're p*ssing off a lot of people with these algorithm tweaks, but Google aren't there to serve us - even if it can be argued that "ethical SEO'ers" are helping Google match up search queries with relevant content. For every "ethical" individual doing this - those who make sure that whatever content they publish will provide some value - there are hundreds or thousands more who care not for the experience or impression they give the end-user.

              Google can't afford to sit on its laurels. Because all the while they do, their competitors steal away their market-share.

              In other words, I don't for a second believe they're doing this "just because they can". They're doing it because they need to.
              What was wrong with their rankings? How do we rank for a specific keyword? We develop the content they're looking for! OMG, alert the SEO police! If that's "seo spam" than just shoot me now. Google might as well just institute a pay-for-inclusion plan to where every site has to be hand reviewed.

              My entire point is I don't really think there was a problem with Google's search results and let's face it, they really have no competitors but themselves.
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              • Profile picture of the author Kevin AKA Hubcap
                Ezine Articles gotta do what they gotta do. IMO 400 words is a good minimum.

                Maybe its just me but I see Google as being truly and utterly full of sh*t. They saw what was happening and let it. After all they were making money hand over fist.

                Why upset the apple cart for a few souls whispering in the forest? But when those whispers turn into a roar Google decides to "save the day" by changing their algorithm.

                If you ask me Google "milked that niche" for all it was worth as they have many others.

                Maybe they should smack themselves or better yet give themselves a swift kick in the a**.
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              • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
                Originally Posted by HigherPrThanGod View Post

                What was wrong with their rankings? How do we rank for a specific keyword? We develop the content they're looking for! OMG, alert the SEO police! If that's "seo spam" than just shoot me now. Google might as well just institute a pay-for-inclusion plan to where every site has to be hand reviewed.

                My entire point is I don't really think there was a problem with Google's search results and let's face it, they really have no competitors but themselves.
                Well, no disrespect, but I wouldn't expect any other opinion from someone who's promoting SEO services in his forum signature.

                For the record, I'm an SEO'er, too. Currently, 90+ percent of my income comes from keyword-optimised content that I've written, backlinked onto the first page of Google and monetised through AdSense and Amazon. I am by no means the "SEO police". I recognise that in the absence of human intelligence when it comes to being able to rank content for relevance and overall quality and accuracy, Google does "sort of" rely on the efforts of people like ourselves. But it strikes me that there are two mindsets from which to approach SEO: (1) trying to help Google help its users; and (2) trying to completely screw Google through any means necessary, and subject its users to extreme inconvenience, purely for financial gain.

                I'm pretty sure I've heard Matt Cutts and other Google employees declare that "SEO isn't evil" - but even necessary - too. They recognise better than anyone the limitations of their algorithms.

                But that doesn't mean they have to tolerate any old crap that gets thrown at them by lazy, inconsiderate individuals.

                I know it's a real struggle to show consideration for such a big, heavily-banked corporation, but let us not forget that so long as they possess the largest chunk of the "search pie", they're effectively consolidating and minimising your own efforts as someone looking to harness and leverage highly targetted search traffic.

                In other words, if the market share was distributed evenly between tens or hundreds of smaller search-engines or similar websites - each of which had proprietary algorithms which responded to "user-manipulation" in totally different ways - the combined fruits of your labour in pandering towards each of them would probably still be siginificantly smaller than what you currently reap from Google alone. At the very least, you'd probably be working a whole lot more for even less than what you have now.

                In "other other words": don't bite the hand that feeds you.

                Instead, give it a manicure.

                Google doesn't need you, because if you're not prepared to provide good quality content that is even semi-relevant to a given search-query, someone else with a little more work-ethic will. :p

                And I can say all this because I utilise their service from the position of an end-user, as well as a marketer/SEO'er.

                Ask yourself this - and be brutally honest: if you weren't in a position to benefit financially (or otherwise) from your SEO efforts, would you be even 60% satisfied with the first-page results Google serves you on a regular basis? Because I can say I wouldn't be. And neither are the other users of their search-engine.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ofthemix
    It is effective indeed. This morning I submitted some articles under 400 and they went through fine. Just went to submit another one and it got das boot.
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  • Profile picture of the author NicoleBeckett
    Definitely nice to see some changes on their end - although, yes, some of it does seem "too little too late". It will be interesting to see what (if anything) the other directories do.
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  • Profile picture of the author CatherineC
    Banned
    For those on the fence about these changes, remember, Chris said BEFORE this quality change they were ALREADY turning down "41.7% of all submissions" on a daily basis.

    Think about that. Nearly HALF of all articles submitted each day were so horrible-beyond-horrible that they weren't making it through the editorial filters for a variety of reasons.

    This is the end result of all the article-factories that have popped up in the Phillipines, India, and other locations, that are selling woefully-awful articles to the lowest bidders.

    EZA will find today's changes likely don't go far enough, if you're an article-marketer I would suggest going past the minimum requirements as far as possible as long as time permits.
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    • Profile picture of the author George Chernikov
      Originally Posted by CatherineC View Post

      Think about that. Nearly HALF of all articles submitted each day were so horrible-beyond-horrible that they weren't making it through the editorial filters for a variety of reasons.

      This is the end result of all the article-factories that have popped up in the Phillipines, India, and other locations, that are selling woefully-awful articles to the lowest bidders.
      It's up to EZA, not the authors to set standards that filter out the good articles from the bad. If EZA chooses to accept an obviously spun article riddled with broken English, offering no new information, and serving as little more than a pre-sell, then it's EZA that's responsible for the mess that happened on their watch.
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      • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
        Originally Posted by George Chernikov View Post

        It's up to EZA, not the authors to set standards that filter out the good articles from the bad. If EZA chooses to accept an obviously spun article riddled with broken English, offering no new information, and serving as little more than a pre-sell, then it's EZA that's responsible for the mess that happened on their watch.
        The question now is: how do they go about remedying years of neglecting the quality of their article database? Mass article deletions are going to be inevitable, and people will become livid....

        This is why it's good for a site to adhere to high quality standards from the get-go.
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        • Profile picture of the author George Chernikov
          Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

          The question now is: how do they go about remedying years of neglecting the quality of their article database? Mass article deletions are going to be inevitable, and people will become livid....

          This is why it's good for a site to adhere to high quality standards from the get-go.
          Agreed. As the first step, they should identify all repetitive articles (a Herculean task, if I ever saw one) for each category. Then break them down by author and delete every single repetitive article each author has, leaving the best one standing. This will eliminate 99% of EZA content, but it will also ensure that the content that stays is actually worth reading. It will also allow for some legitimate repetition, because requiring authors to either say something 100% new or not say anything at all is unrealistic.

          To me, this is the only way EZA can build its own credibility. On the other hand, any business is a number's game - if Chris Knight thinks that more money can be made by keeping the existing model running, then, obviously, this is the best solution.
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          • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
            Originally Posted by George Chernikov View Post

            Agreed. As the first step, they should identify all repetitive articles (a Herculean task, if I ever saw one) for each category. Then break them down by author and delete every single repetitive article each author has, leaving the best one standing. This will eliminate 99% of EZA content, but it will also ensure that the content that stays is actually worth reading. It will also allow for some legitimate repetition, because requiring authors to either say something 100% new or not say anything at all is unrealistic.

            To me, this is the only way EZA can build its own credibility. On the other hand, any business is a number's game - if Chris Knight thinks that more money can be made by keeping the existing model running, then, obviously, this is the best solution.
            but...if you delete 99% of the content...the cash flow from hosted adverts on that Adsense premium account will be cut substantially? (just playing devil's advocate)

            So, how do site's continue to make the SAME or better money, while trimming the fat?

            (I see each individual piece of content as essentially a landscape by which adverts can be hosted. No content=no money)
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            • Profile picture of the author George Chernikov
              Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

              but...if you delete 99% of the content...the cash flow from hosted adverts on that Adsense premium account will be cut substantially? (just playing devil's advocate)

              So, how do site's continue to make the SAME or better money, while trimming the fat?

              (I see each individual piece of content as essentially a landscape by which adverts can be hosted. No content=no money)
              Great minds think alike! I had the Adsense-canvass concept in mind as I wrote the original post, which is why I referred to it all being a numbers' game in the end - if the current model is more lucrative, let them keep it.

              On the other hand, I think EZA realizes, too, that with link and too much unreadable junk, pageviews are going to plummet, and so will Adsense revenue as a result. Moreover, EZA has already taken the hit from Google, and its earnings will be impacted accordingly - the sole question right now is whether they are prepared to accept their existing levels of revenue (which will probably fall even further in the future) or try to get back on their feet (which will entail losses in the long run).

              I concede that this is not a decision that can be made without a team of financial analysts crunching the numbers - but hey, that's what Chris is paying his accounting department for
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          • Profile picture of the author sylviad
            Originally Posted by George Chernikov View Post

            Agreed. As the first step, they should identify all repetitive articles (a Herculean task, if I ever saw one) for each category. Then break them down by author and delete every single repetitive article each author has, leaving the best one standing. This will eliminate 99% of EZA content, but it will also ensure that the content that stays is actually worth reading. It will also allow for some legitimate repetition, because requiring authors to either say something 100% new or not say anything at all is unrealistic.

            To me, this is the only way EZA can build its own credibility. On the other hand, any business is a number's game - if Chris Knight thinks that more money can be made by keeping the existing model running, then, obviously, this is the best solution.
            One quick way for him to get rid of poor content is simply to go by the number of views each article has over a set time period. I know several of mine only received about 40 views over 2 years while others have seen 1,500+ views. I think one is even over 10,000.

            Besides, can't someone come up with a program that will compare articles with certain topical phrases and words? Then, the editors will simply have to decide which ones to keep where duplication is spotted.

            Sylvia
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            • Profile picture of the author CatherineC
              Banned
              Originally Posted by sylviad View Post

              One quick way for him to get rid of poor content is simply to go by the number of views each article has over a set time period. I know several of mine only received about 40 views over 2 years while others have seen 1,500+ views. I think one is even over 10,000.

              Besides, can't someone come up with a program that will compare articles with certain topical phrases and words? Then, the editors will simply have to decide which ones to keep where duplication is spotted.

              Sylvia
              Can't fool with articles by views unfortunately, as too many crafty IMers manipulated the view counts for many years, by either paying for clicks or spoofing the counts artificially with Scrapebox in order to pop up on the lucrative "Most Viewed" list. :rolleyes:

              EZA's hands are tied. No matter what they do, even if they were to prune 99% of the crap from the directory, it would take 12-18 months before the results would take hold.

              I keep saying this in these threads, but it is what it is. And it's not changing no matter what Chris chooses to do or not.

              True writers however can change, and place greater emphasis on other traffic-generation methods...particularly if you're good at it as many here are.
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              • Profile picture of the author Joshua Rigley
                Banned
                Originally Posted by CatherineC View Post

                EZA's hands are tied. No matter what they do, even if they were to prune 99% of the crap from the directory, it would take 12-18 months before the results would take hold.
                That's probably why it's broken over 5 parts. They're implementing the changes over a period of several months instead of all at once. I imagine they will be pruning poor content though, using a combination of manual and automatic methods.
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                • Profile picture of the author Bryan Zimmerman
                  I'm sorry, but every time I hear about their focus is or was on their "user experience", because that's what Google would want, I have to laugh.

                  If you're user experience is your main focus, then someone please explain to me how when you add up the text in the MASSIVE amount of ads they place on each article it adds up to more than the text in the article.

                  I've done this multiple times where I've taken a 400 word article, which according to them was a good length, and then added up the words in all the ads and what do you know.......there's more text in the ads than in the article.

                  User experience? LOL please. It had gotten to the point where it was tough to separate the article from the ads.
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        • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
          Banned
          Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

          The question now is: how do they go about remedying years of neglecting the quality of their article database? Mass article deletions are going to be inevitable
          Well, let's hope so ... (though part of me thinks "I'll believe it when I see it").

          Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

          This is why it's good for a site to adhere to high quality standards from the get-go.
          Agreed.

          As Geroge rightly comments above, it would be a Herculean task indeed to fix all aspects of the problem from this starting position. But I certainly wish them well in trying, if they do.
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          • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
            From an outsider, who has only really registered for an Ezine account, and has yet to submit content (but, is still fascinated nonetheless), I know the Google situation (and EZA's subsequent response) could certainly lead one to believe that things are absolutely horrible over there. Some posts here would lead me to believe that EZA is breathing its last breath.

            How bad are things REALLY? Is anyone really feeling an effect of all of this?
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            • Profile picture of the author George Chernikov
              Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

              From an outsider, who has only really registered for an Ezine account, and has yet to submit content (but, is still fascinated nonetheless), I know the Google situation (and EZA's subsequent response) could certainly lead one to believe that things are absolutely horrible over there. Some posts here would lead me to believe that EZA is breathing its last breath.

              How bad are things REALLY? Is anyone really feeling an effect of all of this?
              I had one of my articles (a legitimate one, about 900 words long) on offshore asset protection (linking back to a real business and explaining genuinely new concepts - in short, not one of those "Click Here to Download My Free Report" sites) - plummet from holding position 2 on Google US since December 2009 to the seventh or eighth place - so yeah, I'm feeling the crunch :-)

              Judging from how extensively Chris is covering the topic, and from the tone and wording of his blog entry, I'd say things really are pretty bad over there. I think they said they're going to lose about 35% of pageviews as a result of the change, which means one-third of the revenue gone in a day. Depending on their profit margins, this could squeeze them pretty badly.
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              • Profile picture of the author TimG
                Originally Posted by George Chernikov View Post

                Judging from how extensively Chris is covering the topic, and from the tone and wording of his blog entry, I'd say things really are pretty bad over there. I think they said they're going to lose about 35% of pageviews as a result of the change, which means one-third of the revenue gone in a day. Depending on their profit margins, this could squeeze them pretty badly.
                That is a big concern for them because that loss in adsense revenue and the loss in folk not renewing their premium memberships will take a toll on the income for EZA.

                Difficult times for them in terms of having enough capital to pay the staff whom they need now more than ever to step up their efforts.

                Respectfully,
                Tim
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              • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
                Originally Posted by George Chernikov View Post

                I had one of my articles (a legitimate one, about 900 words long) on offshore asset protection (linking back to a real business and explaining genuinely new concepts - in short, not one of those "Click Here to Download My Free Report" sites) - plummet from holding position 2 on Google US since December 2009 to the seventh or eighth place - so yeah, I'm feeling the crunch :-)

                Judging from how extensively Chris is covering the topic, and from the tone and wording of his blog entry, I'd say things really are pretty bad over there. I think they said they're going to lose about 35% of pageviews as a result of the change, which means one-third of the revenue gone in a day. Depending on their profit margins, this could squeeze them pretty badly.
                There's an interesting twist to all this, and I'm wondering how it will play out. Adsense is their main source of revenue that I can tell. Most here (I hope) know that they aren't just an everyday traditional Google Adsense publisher. They have a premium publisher account that comes with a whole assortment of benefits.

                Because of their substantially high page views, they've been 'awarded' a premium status, but if those page views slip away, I wonder what the status of their premium account will be?

                While there seems to be a bit of flexibility in the Adsense Premier Publisher account terms, the publishing site is 'suppose' to have 5 million search queries OR 20 million content page views a month. I wonder what will happen if they fall below that? Will Google take away their premium account?

                Here are a list of benefits EZA has gained:
                • Google sales representative and account manager
                • Additional monetization options
                • Customized revenue terms
                • Flexible ad formats
                • Advanced and more robust filtering
                • Assistance with site optimization
                • Enhanced technical support from a sales engineer
                • Business support from a dedicated account manager
                • Monetization of search results
                One of the most intriguing, at least to me, are the "customized revenue terms". If they lose this status, their revenue will be cut big time because: they won't be able to host the same amount of Adsense ads AND they 'shouldn't be' given the same increased revenue share over traditional publishers. It will be interestng to see what happens.
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                • Profile picture of the author TimG
                  Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

                  There's an interesting twist to all this, and I'm wondering how it will play out. Adsense is their main source of revenue that I can tell. Most here (I hope) know that they aren't just an everyday traditional Google Adsense publisher. They have a premium publisher account that comes with a whole assortment of benefits.

                  Because of their substantially high page views, they've been 'awarded' a premium status, but if those page views slip away, I wonder what the status of their premium account will be?

                  While there seems to be a bit of flexibility in the Adsense Premier Publisher account terms, the publishing site is 'suppose' to have 5 million search queries OR 20 million content page views a month. I wonder what will happen if they fall below that? Will Google take away their premium account?


                  Here are a list of benefits EZA has gained:
                  • Google sales representative and account manager
                  • Additional monetization options
                  • Customized revenue terms
                  • Flexible ad formats
                  • Advanced and more robust filtering
                  • Assistance with site optimization
                  • Enhanced technical support from a sales engineer
                  • Business support from a dedicated account manager
                  • Monetization of search results
                  One of the most intriguing, at least to me, are the "customized revenue terms". If they lose this status, their revenue will be cut big time because: they won't be able to host the same amount of Adsense ads AND they 'shouldn't be' given the same increased revenue share over traditional publishers. It will be interestng to see what happens.
                  Howie,
                  I believe EZA plans to cut down on their number of ads anyway. That is on their discussion table for next week.

                  They will still genereate about 20 - 25 million unique visitors next month so I don't think traffic for them will be an issue.

                  The decision to lower the ad count will be made on their own accordance and as an effort to help increase the CTR for the links in the author's resource box.

                  Respectfully,
                  Tim
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                  • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
                    Originally Posted by TimG View Post

                    Howie,
                    I believe EZA plans to cut down on their number of ads anyway. That is on their discussion table for next week.

                    They will still genereate about 20 - 25 million unique visitors next month so I don't think traffic for them will be an issue.

                    The decision to lower the ad count will be made on their own accordance and as an effort to help increase the CTR for the links in the author's resource box.

                    Respectfully,
                    Tim
                    Understood, Tim.

                    Anything they can do to help increase the CTR on the links in the author's resource box will definitely serve as a bit of an incentive for continual usage. People want results, and if they can provide a platform that gives them that, people will remain loyal.
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                    • Profile picture of the author TimG
                      Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

                      Understood, Tim.

                      Anything they can do to help increase the CTR on the links in the author's resource box will definitely serve as a bit of an incentive for continual usage. People want results, and if they can provide a platform that gives them that, people will remain loyal.
                      Agreed - The new 400 word count was based on an analysis they conducted of their published article inventory which showed that many of the spam type articles were all under 399 words.

                      However, EZA now considers the sweet spot for an article to be between 400-750 word in length.

                      The tighter editorial process will also be clamped down harder on specific niches that were gamed/spammed such as "get your ex back" and "reverse cell phone look-up" to name just a few.

                      Personally, I think they will recover because many authors will go elsewhere of which a majority leaving will be good for EZA due to the low quality they submitted.

                      Unfortunately, some great writers will also leave which does hurt based on losing their quality contributions.

                      I intend to stick with them because since 2005 they have never done me wrong and I expect that results from them wil only get better as they implement their changes.

                      Additionally, they are not the only place I submit content to which makes a bump in the road easier to absorb.

                      To some extent article marketing is a bit like the stock market. If you buy one stock and it goes down you lose, if it goes up you win.

                      However, if you purchase a mutual fund you can weather the drops of many different stocks because other stocks are going up.

                      Article (content ) marketing is the same....simply build your article marketing mutual fund and the losses are minimal and the gains are great.

                      EZA is merely one stock in my article marketing mutual fund.

                      Respectfully,
                      Tim
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                      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
                        Banned
                        Originally Posted by TimG View Post

                        many of the spam type articles were all under 399 words.
                        I can certainly believe that there's considerable overlap between "shortest articles" and "spammiest articles", anyway, just judging quickly from what I've seen there. They probably got that right ...

                        Originally Posted by TimG View Post

                        However, EZA now considers the sweet spot for an article to be between 400-750 word in length.
                        With due respect to them, they can have whatever sweet spot they want, as long as they still accept my 900 - 1,300-word articles.

                        Originally Posted by TimG View Post

                        The tighter editorial process will also be clamped down harder on specific niches that were gamed/spammed such as "get your ex back" and "reverse cell phone look-up" to name just a few.
                        There are some weird niches around. :p

                        When I first started playing this game, I discovered to my astonishment that there was such a thing as a "grow taller niche". I thought this was seriously weird. For a long time. Some months later I gradually realised that it was targeted at basketball players, and that basketball's quite popular in America, and it all made sense. (Well, not really, but in marketing terms, anyway.) "Get your ex back" was another one I misunderstood. (Who wants their ex back?!). I thought it must be aimed at over-emotional young women whose boyfriends had dumped them, or something; but no - not a bit of it, wrong again Lexy: it seems the products are for men whose girlfriends have left them. (Or have I still got that one the wrong way round, in my memory of it?). And then there's "reverse cell-phone look-up" about which I still have nothing but utter puzzlement (I'm not asking, don't worry). I sometimes wonder if half these "niches" have just been invented by marketers ...

                        Originally Posted by TimG View Post

                        Personally, I think they will recover because many authors will go elsewhere of which a majority leaving will be good for EZA due to the low quality they submitted.

                        Unfortunately, some great writers will also leave which does hurt based on losing their quality contributions.
                        Yes ... well, let's hope not too many.

                        They might lose huge numbers of really good writers if they take the "Buzzle" route of accepting only previously unpublished content, but I really, really can't see that happening (because they know that, too).

                        Originally Posted by TimG View Post

                        To some extent article marketing is a bit like the stock market. If you buy one stock and it goes down you lose, if it goes up you win.

                        However, if you purchase a mutual fund you can weather the drops of many different stocks because other stocks are going up.

                        Article (content ) marketing is the same....simply build your article marketing mutual fund and the losses are minimal and the gains are great.

                        EZA is merely one stock in my article marketing mutual fund.
                        Indeed. Very nicely put, as ever.
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            • Profile picture of the author TimG
              Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

              From an outsider, who has only really registered for an Ezine account, and has yet to submit content (but, is still fascinated nonetheless), I know the Google situation (and EZA's subsequent response) could certainly lead one to believe that things are absolutely horrible over there. Some posts here would lead me to believe that EZA is breathing its last breath.

              How bad are things REALLY? Is anyone really feeling an effect of all of this?
              Yes....feeling an effect but not as huge or as bad as it looks/sounds. Just checking my stats in the last 24 hours and I'm still receiving traffic form them and my articles are generating page views.

              Not as high as before but still enough to make me beleive that some articles were dropped and others are still ranking to include having moved up in the ranks.

              I'm also noticing more EZA articles in the search engine results today when compared to yesterday.

              It is still way to early to tell what the actual results are from this algo change but never to early to start writing better quality content.

              Respectfully,
              Tim
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            • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
              Banned
              Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

              How bad are things REALLY?
              It's too early to tell.

              Seriously.

              Maybe even "way too early to tell", but definitely "too early to tell", anyway. Typically, though, the hysterical early reactions subside, at least to some extent, and these things turn out not to be as "bad" as most people at first imagined.
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              • Profile picture of the author Rikki_Fawkes
                Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

                It's too early to tell.

                Seriously.

                Maybe even "way too early to tell", but definitely "too early to tell", anyway. Typically, though, the hysterical early reactions subside, at least to some extent, and these things turn out not to be as "bad" as most people at first imagined.
                That's kind of what I thought. I'm kind of glad they implemented the whole 400-word minimum rule, too. Keeps out the competition who kept dumping shoddy 250-300 word articles in the mix because they had a work allergy.
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  • Profile picture of the author Casper C
    I'm pleased to see these changes. I've seen a lot of bad content on Ezine Articles, and it makes me wonder how any of it ever passed the reviews. The web is full of bad content. Focusing on quality has never really let me down.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ofthemix
    Good for them that they're stepping up on all levels of this. I agree that I've read quite a number of articles on there that were horrible. 41.7% is a lot to reject. I feel sorry for the people that have to sort through them all, especially with that 100 article contest going on.
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  • Profile picture of the author cooler1
    What does this mean for articles which are currently pending?

    I submitted 5 articles about 4 days ago, 4 of the articles are below 400 words does this mean they will get rejected now when they are reviewed or does this only apply if you submit an article from now?
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim Franklin
    Interesting, This brings up the question of how valuable the service actually is, I mean consider the idea that EZA looses half of its user base, is that really the way to do business, I mean why punish the user base when it was obviously a decision that EZA made in the first place, naturally steps need to be taken however, I seriously doubt that the steps that have been added, will change goggles mind, consider a target being painted on your forehead.

    Even if you do manage to clean up the database, I seriously doubt that you will see an increase in traffic, likely you may see a lot of users disappear, which may be good for some but in the long run, I suspect that it will be bad for business.

    I suspect that the barn door was left open far too long.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      What's done is done. I think EZA is moving forward in a measured way and there may be more changes to come later. Seems like a good idea to me.

      Implementation is going to depend on the quality/knowledge/training of the reviewers. If I had to spend a full day reading many of the articles I've seen on EZA recently, I'd go nuts.

      kay
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

        What's done is done. I think EZA is moving forward in a measured way and there may be more changes to come later. Seems like a good idea to me.
        As I recall, Chris said on the EZA blog that this is round one, with more to come...

        Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

        Implementation is going to depend on the quality/knowledge/training of the reviewers. If I had to spend a full day reading many of the articles I've seen on EZA recently, I'd go nuts.

        kay
        I agree wholeheartedly. And when you factor in the notion that what we see is the 60% that made the cut... Oy, my aching head...
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      • Profile picture of the author AnniePot
        Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

        Implementation is going to depend on the quality/knowledge/training of the reviewers. If I had to spend a full day reading many of the articles I've seen on EZA recently, I'd go nuts.

        kay
        This is my immediate concern. I have had a couple of articles returned to me for review (not many I agree), where, both times the reviewer was incorrect. Each time, I lodged a complaint and received an apology, but it created unnecessary time wasting.

        I have seen their advertisements for reviewers and they offer a very low rate of pay, so, unless they improve their reviewing abilities, just who will be judging our work?
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  • Profile picture of the author Benjamin Ehinger
    Finally those of us that write quality and use more than just EZA are going to be rewarded. I have heard there is a good possibility that EZA will make a change to only accepting articles that are unique to them, like buzzle does. I hope they do make this change because it will help to sift out some of the crap that those of us with good content compete with regularly.

    It is funny to read so many posts in so many forums about those that are freaking out over this. There have been many, many changes over the short history of the internet and GOOD marketers always find a way to get traffic that is both in quantity and quality. It will not be long before the first guide is published to help article marketers deal with these changes.

    I, personally, think this will make EZA stronger in the long run, but for the short run some of us are going to be very happy we used more than just EZA for article submissions and traffic.

    Benjamin Ehinger
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Benjamin Ehinger View Post

      I have heard there is a good possibility that EZA will make a change to only accepting articles that are unique to them, like buzzle does.
      It seems absolutely inconceivable, to me.

      They'd immediately lose many hundreds (possibly thousands) of their best authors, if they did that - and Chris surely knows this, really. The result would be simply that instead of (as now) there being just one article directory to which the successful professionals will never submit anything, there'd be two.

      Originally Posted by Benjamin Ehinger View Post

      GOOD marketers always find a way to get traffic that is both in quantity and quality.
      Agreed. But good ARTICLE marketers appreciate the long-term significance of having original copies of their work indexed on their own sites before submission elsewhere, for all the reasons so lovingly explained here by so many.
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      • Profile picture of the author M Thompson
        I think it rather hypocritical of EZA to now be bleating that the authors have been submitting low quality articles. It's like people who leave their doors unlocked moaning on the radio about the high instance of crime in their neighbourhood,


        Nobody forced them to accept any of the articles. Every article there was reviewed by their staff at least twice.

        Last year they hit hard at authors about "derivitave" articles and ones that changed to follow the new rules soon noticed that poor quality articles were still being posted.
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  • Profile picture of the author penpal6
    Excellent! These new guidelines will ensure the ezine supremacy over other articles directories.
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  • Profile picture of the author arttse
    The reason why they got slapped so hard is because of spamming.

    Look at their top author. Has over 25K articles saying the same thing over and over again.
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  • Profile picture of the author dezchamps
    It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Will authors decide it's not worth the trouble, and go submit elsewhere? Do you think Google will give them a 'good boy" badge and return all the traffic and rankings?
    I think they have a hard road ahead of them. I guess they had to do something.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jordan Kovats
    I'm curious what it takes to get Platinum status? 44 articles submitted, none rejected, all meeting the criteria, and still not granted? It will be interesting what happens after my Basic Plus level exhausts it's 15 remainig submissions. It may be a forced move to Buzzle et al...
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    • Profile picture of the author Britt Malka
      Originally Posted by theseoguys View Post

      I'm curious what it takes to get Platinum status? 44 articles submitted, none rejected, all meeting the criteria, and still not granted? It will be interesting what happens after my Basic Plus level exhausts it's 15 remainig submissions. It may be a forced move to Buzzle et al...
      That's odd. Why don't you ask them? If you've complied to the editorial guidelines (even the non-written part), then you should have received Platinum status after 10 articles. I would contact them, if I were you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Terry Hatfield
    The big shocker with ezinearticles is yet to come.

    Expect mass deletion of existing articles that are in questionable niches such as male enhancement, dieting products and dating/relationship.

    They said on their blog that they are going delete a lot of articles in spammy niches. That alone will wipe out a lot of people's money makers.
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Originally Posted by Terry Hatfield View Post

      The big shocker with ezinearticles is yet to come.

      Expect mass deletion of existing articles that are in questionable niches such as male enhancement, dieting products and dating/relationship.

      They said on their blog that they are going delete a lot of articles in spammy niches. That alone will wipe out a lot of people's money makers.
      This is EXACTLY what eHow did.

      Anyone remember their mass article deletions?

      They deleted for a whole plethora of unclear reasons...ultimately, it goes back to years of not adequately controlling for the quality of their database.
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      • Profile picture of the author mekap04
        You know, the funny thing is that I just bought an ebook about article marketing and EZA and read all the way through it and said to myself..good stuff.....which now is irrelevant. How good is my luck. In any case, can't do anything but adapt to the changes and make it work...or go somewhere else.
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        • Profile picture of the author tamarindcandy
          Originally Posted by mekap04 View Post

          You know, the funny thing is that I just bought an ebook about article marketing and EZA and read all the way through it and said to myself..good stuff.....which now is irrelevant. How good is my luck. In any case, can't do anything but adapt to the changes and make it work...or go somewhere else.
          I've always felt those ebooks to be an absolute waste of time and money, anyway. Nothing personal for people who do write them and profit from them--if you do, more power to you--but from my point of view, you can learn such information through osmosis and reading forums like this one.
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      • Profile picture of the author MarkWrites
        Originally Posted by Greg Wildermuth View Post

        I'd hate to be an Ezine employee who now has to double-check all the crap that comes in! wow...
        I don't know what would be worse, that or being the Ezine employee who now has to go back and re-read all the crap that came in before.
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        • Profile picture of the author zena lour
          Originally Posted by MarkWrites View Post

          I don't know what would be worse, that or being the Ezine employee who now has to go back and re-read all the crap that came in before.

          LOL thats funny.

          the're probably working wayyy over time
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    • Profile picture of the author CatherineC
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Terry Hatfield View Post

      The big shocker with ezinearticles is yet to come.

      Expect mass deletion of existing articles that are in questionable niches such as male enhancement, dieting products and dating/relationship.

      They said on their blog that they are going delete a lot of articles in spammy niches. That alone will wipe out a lot of people's money makers.
      Awesome, how great would that be?

      Time to get out some garbage bags and fill em up.

      I said in another thread on this that it took EZA nearly 10 years to reach 2M articles published...

      Since then it's taken LESS than 2 years to reach 6M articles published.

      Which tells you that bum marketing + article factories = heavily polluted article directories the past few years.

      Time to take out the trash.
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      • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
        Originally Posted by CatherineC View Post

        Awesome, how great would that be?

        Time to get out some garbage bags and fill em up.

        I said in another thread on this that it took EZA nearly 10 years to reach 2M articles published...

        Since then it's taken LESS than 2 years to reach 6M articles published.

        Which tells you that bum marketing + article factories = heavily polluted article directories the past few years.

        Time to take out the trash.
        My question is...

        HOW will they go about these mass article deletions?

        There are some articles that are flat-out garbage, while there are some that walk a gray line--with writers who are genuinly doing the same thing. Although there are ALOT of articles, and effectively doing this may require expanding staff, I personally believe that the greatest effort possible should be given to give as much individual feedback as possible.

        Like eHow, had they done this from the beginning, they wouldn't now be faced with completely obliterating people's earnings overnight. I have a feeling that the articles deleted will receive little to no feedback either. It's a gray line...but, there are ethics involved here...

        There were single mothers/college students with content up on eHow that lost a huge revenue sort because 10-20-30+ of their articles were wiped out with little to no feedback.

        Yes, there are tons of people who exploit systems, but then there are alot of people who are genuinly trying to do good.
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      • Profile picture of the author ShaneM686
        Originally Posted by CatherineC View Post

        Awesome, how great would that be?

        Time to get out some garbage bags and fill em up.

        I said in another thread on this that it took EZA nearly 10 years to reach 2M articles published...

        Since then it's taken LESS than 2 years to reach 6M articles published.

        Which tells you that bum marketing + article factories = heavily polluted article directories the past few years.

        Time to take out the trash.
        Catherine,
        you clearly use article marketing quite a bit.... Do you still have articles ranking for competitive search terms? I have several articles that were first page.. but dropped back to page 2-3-4 and some that went bye bye in highly competitive terms(10k+exact)...

        Also, do you backlink to them, and using what?
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        • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
          Just received notification of another blog post from EzineArticles on this matter, here.

          EDIT: Apparently, gone are the days of "authors" being able to submit articles completely unrelated to the sites they're linking to, purely for backlinking purposes. Regardless of the quality of the article itself, the resource-box and links therein need to be relevant. (edit #2: Sorry, I'm half-drunk and slow. This is a proposed requirement, it seems. Not yet mandatory. :p I'm going to bed, lol.)
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          • Profile picture of the author TimG
            Originally Posted by DireStraits View Post

            Just received notification of another blog post from EzineArticles on this matter, here.
            Read through the latest blog posting and applaud it. I don't think it provides anything new because true article marketers were already not participating in thise types of actions.

            I think that a majority of the marketers it will affect are those that got caught up in the trap of writing an article for a hot trend so that it would get lots of page views and then misdirecting their readers elsewhere in with an unrelated resource box.

            I never did like smoke and mirror tricks like that.

            This has never been about gaming the system....it should always have been about how to maximize the systems effectiveness in a responsible manner.

            Respectfully,
            Tim
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            • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
              Originally Posted by TimG View Post

              Read through the latest blog posting and applaud it. I don't think it provides anything new because true article marketers were already not participating in thise types of actions.

              I think that a majority of the marketers it will affect are those that got caught up in the trap of writing an article for a hot trend so that it would get lots of page views and then misdirecting their readers elsewhere in with an unrelated resource box.

              I never did like smoke and mirror tricks like that.

              This has never been about gaming the system....it should always have been about how to maximize the systems effectiveness in a responsible manner.

              Respectfully,
              Tim
              There are those people, for sure. But XFactor (the "AdSense guy") also proposed the idea of writing articles on random topics that are unrelated to one's website(s) - for the mere sake of cranking them out more quickly and easily, of course. :p

              A huge proportion of the EZA articles I've stumbled across in the SERPs recently have actually been linking out to "XFactor-type" sites, and the articles carrying those links have been totally unrelated to both their resource-boxes and the sites to which they were linking.

              Granted, not all of the articles have been utter tripe (I've seen worse: often those that follow the "writing for clicks" approach), but with the potential added constraint of having to write on-topic for what are often very narrow, "hard-to-write-for" niches, I expect that'll deter many of the people utilising that approach from submitting there at all. Which means less "backlinking clutter" still, I guess.

              Night all.
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          • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
            Banned
            Originally Posted by DireStraits View Post

            Apparently, gone are the days of "authors" being able to submit articles completely unrelated to the sites they're linking to, purely for backlinking purposes
            Eew, you mean I now have to remember what I'm writing about all the way through, right up to and including the resource-box itself, too?!
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            • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
              Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

              Eew, you mean I now have to remember what I'm writing about all the way through, right up to and including the resource-box itself, too?!
              Apparently so. I know, I know: life is hard ... especially for someone like yourslf, with such restricted cranial capacity and limited writing ability.


              (^ Sarcasm: some women like it. For everyone else, there are direct compliments. )
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            • Profile picture of the author peter gibson
              Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

              Eew, you mean I now have to remember what I'm writing about all the way through, right up to and including the resource-box itself, too?!
              The horror.
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        • Profile picture of the author CatherineC
          Banned
          Originally Posted by ShaneM686 View Post

          Catherine,
          you clearly use article marketing quite a bit.... Do you still have articles ranking for competitive search terms? I have several articles that were first page.. but dropped back to page 2-3-4 and some that went bye bye in highly competitive terms(10k+exact)...

          Also, do you backlink to them, and using what?
          I track content I've written for others, and use EZA (and other directories) mainly as experiments for conversion, traffic, etc.

          It's more like a laboratory, if something works on EZA it will work 10x as well in a solo ad to a niche-based ezine mailing list...which then makes that content worth $20-30 per article for the buyer, and more, because the multiple of ROI is so high.

          The main point of my posts is to illustrate that there are far better ways to make a living by writing and driving traffic than playing the Article Directory/Backlinking/SEO game.

          This is a good wakeup call for those who somehow thought Google was just going to allow every single "How To" query entered into a search field to somehow wind up at a web 2.0 congregator site...80% of which are filled with garbage content purely looking for an affiliate sale.

          Obviously that wasn't going to be allowed to continue, and now it isn't.

          Eventually sharp SEO minds will figure out how to game the results yet again using articles, and then we'll have the obligatory "BUM MARKETING 2.0 WSO!!!!" nonsense blasting from every horn haha, but until then it's smart to look at this as a chance to learn how to drive traffic using other more protected methods.
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    • Profile picture of the author sylviad
      Originally Posted by Terry Hatfield View Post

      The big shocker with ezinearticles is yet to come.

      Expect mass deletion of existing articles that are in questionable niches such as male enhancement, dieting products and dating/relationship.

      They said on their blog that they are going delete a lot of articles in spammy niches. That alone will wipe out a lot of people's money makers.
      This is interesting. I used to publish a lot on SearchWarp until they decided they were not going to publish articles in niches that were popular with affiliate marketers. :confused:

      I'd written tons of quality articles from a personal perspective in the anxiety niche which they happily published. A lot of traffic came from that site. But now they refuse to accept anxiety-related articles.

      They also stated they wanted to ramp up their directory so that the articles targeted niches other than business / IM / Marketing, etc. They wanted to focus on self improvement, parenting, health and similar niches. Well, apparently, anxiety doesn't fit. :confused: And since there are so many people marketing stop smoking products, I guess articles on that won't fit either.

      SearchWarp told me that even if I sent them an anxiety article that pointed people to my own report or ebook, or just to my blog to read more articles on the topic, it would be rejected. Yet, they praised the quality of the articles I had sent them to date (3-4+ years' worth) and how much they appreciated my submissions.

      It makes you wonder how many niches do NOT have affiliate products. What will SearchWarp do when those topics draw more affiliate marketers?

      Obviously, they don't want articles from people running businesses - only those wanting to share information. Which comes back to anxiety. My articles were all highly informative. There were not pushing anything but good advice.

      Go figure.

      The next question is, what will happen at EA if they take this approach?

      Sylvia
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      • Profile picture of the author ELK
        Originally Posted by sylviad View Post

        This is interesting. I used to publish a lot on SearchWarp until they decided they were not going to publish articles in niches that were popular with affiliate marketers. :confused:

        I'd written tons of quality articles from a personal perspective in the anxiety niche which they happily published. A lot of traffic came from that site. But now they refuse to accept anxiety-related articles.

        They also stated they wanted to ramp up their directory so that the articles targeted niches other than business / IM / Marketing, etc. They wanted to focus on self improvement, parenting, health and similar niches. Well, apparently, anxiety doesn't fit. :confused: And since there are so many people marketing stop smoking products, I guess articles on that won't fit either.

        SearchWarp told me that even if I sent them an anxiety article that pointed people to my own report or ebook, or just to my blog to read more articles on the topic, it would be rejected. Yet, they praised the quality of the articles I had sent them to date (3-4+ years' worth) and how much they appreciated my submissions.

        It makes you wonder how many niches do NOT have affiliate products. What will SearchWarp do when those topics draw more affiliate marketers?

        Obviously, they don't want articles from people running businesses - only those wanting to share information. Which comes back to anxiety. My articles were all highly informative. There were not pushing anything but good advice.

        Go figure.

        The next question is, what will happen at EA if they take this approach?

        Sylvia
        That is too bad. I'm in the health/mental health niche and anxiety truly is a huge problem. That seems a little overboard that they wouldn't accept it purely based on the topic, not even regarding what you linked it to. Unfortunately, they may cut out a lot of good writers when they do that, like yourself.
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  • Profile picture of the author VOnline
    Good part of the G slap. Causes a nice ripple effect for all of us.
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  • Profile picture of the author Danervin
    I really wish they could have at least gave i dunno say 1-2 weeks warning! If they did we could have prepared for this!
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  • Profile picture of the author SFitzpatrick
    If they're now saying 400 word minimum is that an indication not only of their attempts to minimise spam but also a change to googles algorithm that may start to overlook short blog posts etc?
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  • Profile picture of the author suziewong
    The only complaint that I have about the new Ezine articles policy is that we are no longer able to use the WP plugin. It was so convenient and time saving. A few weeks warning of these changes would have been nice!
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  • Profile picture of the author HaydenR
    Lol.. it takes a Google slap to make them wake up.. interesting..
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Originally Posted by HaydenR View Post

      Lol.. it takes a Google slap to make them wake up.. interesting..
      This is what happened to Squidoo as well.

      Here is the problem: in a rush to pump out as much content as possible, and make as much money as possible in the quickest time possible, MANY sites (check out the link I had posted previously) have spent years completely neglecting quality. Now, it comes to this....and, yes, while some writers game the system...the ones who are truly trying to do the right thing will end up suffering and having a huge chunk of their income streams obliterated.

      Does it need to be done? Yes.

      Is the way everything has been handled ethical? Questionable, but, when it comes to money, I'm learning that few owners care.

      What SHOULD happen, although its logistically unfeasible, is to provide every writer of every deleted article candidate, at least a sentence feedback and a period to change or adjust the content to meet the site's standards. This courtesy typically isn't given.

      I'm of the belief that, even if it requires hiring 10 other staffers, so be it. This is how users/customers should be treated. Ezine Articles earns hundreds of thousands a month...they can afford it.
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  • Profile picture of the author scrofford
    I think this is a great thing! I have wondered when they were going to raise their standards anyway...For a while it was getting pretty slimy and maybe being a Platinum member will mean something again.
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Originally Posted by scrofford View Post

      I think this is a great thing! I have wondered when they were going to raise their standards anyway...For a while it was getting pretty slimy and maybe being a Platinum member will mean something again.
      It's ashame though that the standards are always neglected until it becomes in their monetary best interest to do something about. Had these platforms had viable quality control processes in the first place, you wouldn't now have to deal with mass deleting content. Income sources will be obliterated over night. Some will deserve it for creating crap content, but, others who really tried to do right will be affected as well.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tina Golden
      Originally Posted by CatherineC View Post

      This is the end result of all the article-factories that have popped up in the Phillipines, India, and other locations, that are selling woefully-awful articles to the lowest bidders.
      No, it's not. Those article factories are there because short-sighted marketers begged for the cheapest solution. Don't blame the article factories for meeting that demand. They're doing the best they can considering many of them are writing in a language other than what they're born to. How many good articles could you put out in Tagalog or Indian?

      Originally Posted by theseoguys View Post

      I'm curious what it takes to get Platinum status? 44 articles submitted, none rejected, all meeting the criteria, and still not granted? It will be interesting what happens after my Basic Plus level exhausts it's 15 remainig submissions. It may be a forced move to Buzzle et al...
      Definitely send an email to support. That sounds like just an oversight. I had a client that was sent to Basic Plus after not one of his first articles were rejected. He politely put that in a note to support and was sent to Platinum within 24 hours.

      Originally Posted by Black Hat Cat View Post

      I've never been a fan of EA, but frankly, the way they and others have been singled out and targeted by Google sucks. This wasn't the result of any algorithm change, it was the result of Google going through and manually picking winners and losers because...well, just because. That's why youtube, which just happens to be a Google property, improved it's standing, despite putting out as much, if not more crap than anyone else, not to mention the massive amount of copyright violations that occur there.
      Completely agree. Supposedly this change was to target the scrapers and autoblogs that added nothing of value on their own. Instead, the autoblogs are doing fine. Something doesn't add up there.

      Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

      Is the way everything has been handled ethical? Questionable, but, when it comes to money, I'm learning that few owners care.

      What SHOULD happen, although its logistically unfeasible, is to provide every writer of every deleted article candidate, at least a sentence feedback and a period to change or adjust the content to meet the site's standards. This courtesy typically isn't given.

      I'm of the belief that, even if it requires hiring 10 other staffers, so be it. This is how users/customers should be treated. Ezine Articles earns hundreds of thousands a month...they can afford it.
      That's asking a bit much, don't you think? That's what happens when you submit your content to a site that has a TOS that can change without warning. You agree to that when you start working with a site.
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      • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
        I think it's hard, if not impossible, to evade some degree of reliance on outside entities NO matter what you venture to do anywhere in life and business.

        Even your own online properties can falter:

        http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...g-new-now.html

        As wise and prudent IM'ers, we should be as proactive as possible in thoroughly researching those products/services/websites/etc that we DO rely on. THAT's how we best minimize risk.


        Originally Posted by Tina Golden View Post

        No, it's not. Those article factories are there because short-sighted marketers begged for the cheapest solution. Don't blame the article factories for meeting that demand. They're doing the best they can considering many of them are writing in a language other than what they're born to. How many good articles could you put out in Tagalog or Indian?

        Definitely send an email to support. That sounds like just an oversight. I had a client that was sent to Basic Plus after not one of his first articles were rejected. He politely put that in a note to support and was sent to Platinum within 24 hours.

        Completely agree. Supposedly this change was to target the scrapers and autoblogs that added nothing of value on their own. Instead, the autoblogs are doing fine. Something doesn't add up there.

        That's asking a bit much, don't you think? That's what happens when you submit your content to a site that has a TOS that can change without warning. You agree to that when you start working with a site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ofthemix
    lol I can see it now, a few years down the road, Google will issue another slap and EZA will raise it to 600 words or more and probably delete a few more categories. Even a lot of the good article marketers will be singing a different tune of panic then.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      I'm sitting here wondering if I should even put my 2 cents in on this subject.
      If I say what's REALLY on my mind...well, it won't be pretty.

      Truth is, there is more than enough blame to go around in this train wreck...
      greed being the operative word folks.

      1. EZA - Trying to milk as much Adsense income out of their, what's
      essentially an Adsense farm, site (and I use that term loosely) as they can.
      Now THAT'S coming back to haunt them.

      2. The Article Writers - Pumping out as much crap as EZA will let them
      pump out in order to make as much of a killing as THEY can.

      3. Google just being, well, Google, and trying to control the Internet like
      a couch potato controls the remote on his plasma TV.

      You can thank the whole shootin' match for the mess that we're left with.

      And anybody who looks up in astonishment wondering how such a
      horrible thing can happen needs to have their head examined for any
      traces of reality.

      I'm just surprised it took THIS long for Google to essentially tell EZA that
      they suck.

      The king is dead folks.

      Long live the king.
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      • Profile picture of the author alexanderpoole9
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        1. EZA - Trying to milk as much Adsense income out of their, what's
        essentially an Adsense farm, site (and I use that term loosely) as they can.
        Now THAT'S coming back to haunt them.

        I'm just surprised it took THIS long for Google to essentially tell EZA that
        they suck.
        If this is your feeling, and you have used this site consistently to submit your articles to, what does this say about you?
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        • Profile picture of the author Rikki_Fawkes
          Originally Posted by alexanderpoole9 View Post

          If this is your feeling, and you have used this site consistently to submit your articles to, what does this say about you?
          Just because a site builds their business off of something like that doesn't mean it's useless for serious IM'ers. After all, since Google was willing to give it such high rankings for a long time, it's better to utilize the system in a positive way and succeed rather than try to compete against it and fail continually.
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        • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
          Originally Posted by alexanderpoole9 View Post

          If this is your feeling, and you have used this site consistently to submit your articles to, what does this say about you?
          I don't know. Why don't you tell me?
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          • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
            How many people take the time to read the fundamental TOS/FAQs of the site they publish there content to?

            Call me crazy...and, I know probably 99.9% of IM'ers don't do this...but, I, personally, print the things out, highlight the heck out of them, and keep them in a folder. Some will disagree, but there's very little you can do in life and business without exerting at least some degree of reliance on an outside entity. What if your hosting goes down or something like that? Same thing here...In every facet of life, we 'should' all take the proactive steps to ensure our assets (content/etc) are safeguarded.

            Do many do this? Probably not.
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            • Profile picture of the author AnniePot
              Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

              How many people take the time to read the fundamental TOS/FAQs of the site they publish there content to?

              Call me crazy...and, I know probably 99.9% of IM'ers don't do this...but, I, personally, print the things out, highlight the heck out of them, and keep them in a folder. Some will disagree, but there's very little you can do in life and business without exerting at least some degree of reliance on an outside entity. What if your hosting goes down or something like that? Same thing here...In every facet of life, we 'should' all take the proactive steps to ensure our assets (content/etc) are safeguarded.

              Do many do this? Probably not.
              Oh, how I agree with you

              I have run a little article directory for a little over two years. I strive for quality content! I publish my submission guidelines and links to them all over the site. I also point out on the submission page the main reasons articles get rejected. In fact, I think I've bent over backwards to make it easy for people.

              Yet 99% of the articles I reject, violate those submission guidelines.

              If I were to accept every article submitted, my directory would be choking with trash right now. Many of those I do accept aren't perfect, but neither are they glaringly hideous.

              Yes - read the submission guidelines all the directories provide for you, and maybe you will discover many of your articles actually being published.
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    • Profile picture of the author unclepennybags
      Hah, I am lovin this. It is almost as if the rules have not changed at all for me. Oh yea except all the pretenders and spammers will be filtered more. Good. Maybe it will give the real sites a chance.
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  • Profile picture of the author clever7
    Today I saw that my sites are getting more traffic from Google. However, I don't see the many links of my EA articles sending them the usual traffic they do. It seems that the changes have also affected original articles submitted to their article directory. I hope things will get back to normal in a while.
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    • Profile picture of the author Gail Ogden
      One things for sure about the internet -- it's always changing
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      Daring to make money on line.

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  • Profile picture of the author tpw
    Long overdue....
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    Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)
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  • Profile picture of the author MrDoughBoy
    Banned
    I am newbie here but no newbie to IM and I just want to say I am really learning a lot from the comments in this thread. This is definitely IM speed learning 2.0!
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  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    If ezine just charged everyone $2 an article, it would weed out most of the morons.
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  • Profile picture of the author matt5409
    hey, who needs article submission anyway? directory submission all the way!

    j/k
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  • Profile picture of the author MoneyRock
    Few days ago I create a thread here entitled: "The Death Of Bum Marketing Or The Death Of Article Marketing". I was bombarded left to right by warriors, who from all indication were not informed of the most recent Google algorithm change and the infects it will have on article marketing.

    I guess I deserve an apology from you. It goes without saying that bum marketing, though not dead, has suffered a huge hit. You do realize that now right??
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Worner
    Honestly, I don't see what difference raising the minimum word count to 400 will make, as a lot of the products about writing for clicks advised you to write around 350-400 words.

    Chris
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Not sure what is so difficult about this....Google is essentially giving everyone their 'Secret Formula' on a silver platter...

      1) Write High Quality Content
      2) Write Original Content
      3) Write In-depth Content
      4) Have Content that Is Always Providing Value to the Reader

      Seems like a no-brainer to me. Unfortunately, in the pursuit of as much money as possible, even top directories have neglected one or all of these things. The sites that figure THAT out, and implement them the best, will rise to the top.
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      • Profile picture of the author thebitbotdotcom
        Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

        Not sure what is so difficult about this....Google is essentially giving everyone their 'Secret Formula' on a silver platter...

        1) Write High Quality Content
        2) Write Original Content
        3) Write In-depth Content
        4) Have Content that Is Always Providing Value to the Reader

        Seems like a no-brainer to me. Unfortunately, in the pursuit of as much money as possible, even top directories have neglected one or all of these things. The sites that figure THAT out, and implement them the best, will rise to the top.
        Nicely put and so true. Giant article directories are no different than giant MFA sites with similar quality in many cases.
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        • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
          Originally Posted by thebitbotdotcom View Post

          Nicely put and so true. Giant article directories are no different than giant MFA sites with similar quality in many cases.
          Do you remember Squidoo's "slap", thebitbodotcom? For a long while, for most of their ascending to the "top", they actually had a Porn category. Their site's business model, among other sites as well, has evolved over the years--in accordance with how they perceive that they can best accommodate both their users, as well as Google. How do they give enough freedom for users to not complain, yet still be favored in Google?

          Let's face it, some IMers complain if they aren't allowed an infinite amount of outgoing links or something like that. The fundamental requirements of Google have always essentially been the same, but sites have neglected them in order to attract more members = gaining more content = ultimately, making more money.

          Unfortunately, high quality control standards put those off who hope to immediately exploit the platform--sites like Squidoo had a benefit to keep these people around simply because they were providing content that could be monetized. Like I've been saying for months, the sites that can effectively brand itself, while getting users to actively engage AND ensure quality....WINS.
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  • Profile picture of the author thebitbotdotcom
    The new standards really aren't that stringent and a lot of fluff will get through even with an increased word count and uniqueness requirement.

    If, for some reason, they stop accepting duplicate content as some have mentioned, then I have two choices...post my article to my blog or post it to EZA...sorry EZA, my articles my site bring me more traffic than my articles on your site. You lose.
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  • Profile picture of the author George Chernikov
    EZA is still missing the real problem why so many of their articles are junk.

    As an EZA contributor, there are three ways you can drive traffic to your site:

    1) Exceptionally high-quality articles that get republished all over the Internet
    2) SEO-optimized articles that generate increased article views through Google rankings
    3) Ongoing stream of mediocre articles with each neeting 5-6 visitors while it's on the front page

    Barring notable exceptions, the three are mutually exclusive - the more SEO-optimized an article is, the less reader-friendly it becomes, and the lower its chances of being republished are. The higher the quality of the article, the less of those one can produce. In short, you can have one, but not the other two.

    So where's the problem?

    Category 1 articles get drowned in Category 2 and Category 3 submissions, to the point where most people would not bother looking through the mud to find the jewel. Add to that the fact that 99% of all articles submitted to EZA cite no references, their relevance in scholarly research becomes non-existent. In short, there's very little reason to coming looking through the whole of EZA to find those few articles that are worth republishing.

    That leaves us with Category 2 and Category 3 articles - and those are usually crap. In Category 3 in particular, there's only so many new things you can say before you start repeating yourself. In the "get your ex back niche", for instance, where I know a few very senior and respectable members of the forum work, you will find tons of articles following the same basic structure:

    1. Hey - you got dumped and this is bad, we feel for ya (Introduction).
    2. Ignore your ex for a month (Paragraph 1)
    3. After they've had a chance to miss you, offer to meet them (Paragraph 2)
    4. Use friendship to rekindle the old flame (Paragraph 3)
    5. Ride off into the sunset (Conclusion)

    This junk is being spun all the time - and even if it is done manually by very talented authors, it still adds NO value to the end user, and serves only to populate EZA with more and more redundant, rehashed content that discourages Category 1 submissions. What you end up with is a vicious cycle - to get ongoing traffic, you need to keep writing articles, and the only way to keep writing articles is to keep repeating yourself.
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    • Profile picture of the author teatree
      Originally Posted by George Chernikov View Post

      EZA is still missing the real problem why so many of their articles are junk.

      As an EZA contributor, there are three ways you can drive traffic to your site:

      1) Exceptionally high-quality articles that get republished all over the Internet
      2) SEO-optimized articles that generate increased article views through Google rankings
      3) Ongoing stream of mediocre articles with each neeting 5-6 visitors while it's on the front page

      Barring notable exceptions, the three are mutually exclusive - the more SEO-optimized an article is, the less reader-friendly it becomes, and the lower its chances of being republished are. The higher the quality of the article, the less of those one can produce. In short, you can have one, but not the other two.

      So where's the problem?

      Category 1 articles get drowned in Category 2 and Category 3 submissions, to the point where most people would not bother looking through the mud to find the jewel.
      Add to that the fact that even when you do submit a Category 1 article, which gets republished all over the net - your links will get no-followed, and in some cases removed entirely. So there is simply no benefit to submitting an article of quality to them at all.
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      • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
        Originally Posted by teatree View Post

        Add to that the fact that even when you do submit a Category 1 article, which gets republished all over the net - your links will get no-followed, and in some cases removed entirely. So there is simply no benefit to submitting an article of quality to them at all.
        What's the point in submitting a high-quality article, for syndication, if your links are removed? (Seriously, I don't use EZA...didn't even know this was possible...) This happens frequently?
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        • Profile picture of the author teatree
          Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

          What's the point in submitting a high-quality article, for syndication, if your links are removed? (Seriously, I don't use EZA...didn't even know this was possible...) This happens frequently?
          All the time. The first time I found my article republished all over the web I was overjoyed - till I clicked on them only to find my links either removed or no-followed.

          Syndication as a way of getting links has not worked since no-follow was introduced back in 2007, and webmasters got the idea they should "hoard" link juice by no-following everything even when using a syndicated article whose TOS says you should not alter the links in any way.

          The syndication side of things has been broken for a while. People only wrote there because the Ezines themselves ranked well in the SERPs and passed re-directed traffic, plus a bit of link juice.

          Now they've been hit they pass no traffic and barely any link juice, so a complete waste of time writing for them.
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        • Profile picture of the author CyndiHester
          Thanks for such a detailed update. Yep, good ole' Google......keeps changing things
          so we are always guessing!

          So long to bum marketing!
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  • Profile picture of the author Talinn
    Completely agree with Chernikov.

    I, as a mass article submitter to EZA; feel responsible for all this. Surely it wasn't just me but hundreds of other high-volume submitters submitting the same thing over and over again - but even then, if it's not because of me then it's because of people LIKE me.

    I am the exact thing that EZA is trying to get rid of - and I have definitely deserved it. For a long time I have been trying to convince myself to stop doing this, because it's not a business plan, but it just earned me a lot of money so I couldn't stop.

    Now Google slapped them, meaning people like me wouldn't be able to make money by doing this even if EZA didn't bring those new regulations, and I actually feel... relieved.

    Well, even if each individual article I wrote were of much higher quality than the crap being posted to EZA, I still feel sorry for being an idiot and putting quantity over quality wherever I could.

    Sorry EZA and sorry EZA authors who had been submitting original and quality articles that got lost in the shadow of the massive number of articles I have sent for the last 1.5 years!
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    • Profile picture of the author George Chernikov
      Originally Posted by Talinn View Post

      Completely agree with Chernikov.

      I, as a mass article submitter to EZA; feel responsible for all this. Surely it wasn't just me but hundreds of other high-volume submitters submitting the same thing over and over again - but even then, if it's not because of me then it's because of people LIKE me.

      I am the exact thing that EZA is trying to get rid of - and I have definitely deserved it. For a long time I have been trying to convince myself to stop doing this, because it's not a business plan, but it just earned me a lot of money so I couldn't stop.

      Now Google slapped them, meaning people like me wouldn't be able to make money by doing this even if EZA didn't bring those new regulations, and I actually feel... relieved.

      Well, even if each individual article I wrote were of much higher quality than the crap being posted to EZA, I still feel sorry for being an idiot and putting quantity over quality wherever I could.

      Sorry EZA and sorry EZA authors who had been submitting original and quality articles that got lost in the shadow of the massive number of articles I have sent for the last 1.5 years!
      There's nothing to apologise for because you really had no choice - the only way to compete with everyone else who's doing the same thing is to do the same thing yourself. Hence my reference to a vicious circle, and the conclusion that the only way for EZA to restore credibility is to delete 99% of all the articles there and enforce strict editorial controls - something that EZA has always refused to do.

      In short, absence of editorial controls combined with a business model that encourages rehashed content make a Google slap an inevitable conclusion. If anything, I'm surprised it took so long...

      By the way, if anyone here truly believs that EZA content is useful and is written by genuine experts, ask yourselves - if you had to produce a scholarly work subject to peer review, would you even use EZA content in your writing? I guarantee that if you did, you'd be the laughing stock of the room. That's how little credibility EZA has outside the IM world.
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  • Profile picture of the author yourreviewer
    As long as the mentality of wanting immediate results and doing the least exists, this WILL always be a problem. Marketers will try to pollute and exploit every possible channel to gain traffic no matter whether it is Twitter or Squidoo or EZA.

    Think about it, if you take the time to write just one article a day and do it for a year, you will have at the end of the year 365 articles on your website/blog and across multiple article directories. This is very feasible and achievable.

    But here lies the problem- some people need money yesterday, some are out of jobs or almost broke, some just want to make money online (and don't care about building a business) and others can't wait that long for results. So what do they do- they look around for ways to get the most with the least work.

    The result- they turn to products that offer poor advice, embrace article spinners and mass article distribution services to churn out large quantities of poor content. And when they do end up making a few sales- they scale it up and do their best to contribute to crapopedia.

    Without mentioning any names, I made a request to an article marketing expert here to come up with a product for which she mentioned that among the barrage of hyped up WSO offers that promise you to make the most money with the least efforts, an honest offer devoid of hype and a realization that it takes time and effort may not interest too many people.

    Unfortunately, I agree with her.
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    • Profile picture of the author j10nnb
      The 400 word is probably enough with the short attention span of readers now. How many will read more that 3 - 4 paragraphs before they flip some where else. In fact, how many if they saw a 1000 plus word article would even bother staying on the page. The way people seem to want things is quick and in snippets.
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    • Profile picture of the author George Chernikov
      Originally Posted by yourreviewer View Post

      As long as the mentality of wanting immediate results and doing the least exists, this WILL always be a problem. Marketers will try to pollute and exploit every possible channel to gain traffic no matter whether it is Twitter or Squidoo or EZA.

      Think about it, if you take the time to write just one article a day and do it for a year, you will have at the end of the year 365 articles on your website/blog and across multiple article directories. This is very feasible and achievable..
      If you write one article a day for 365 days, you will run out of original contest by about day 20. Once that happens, you'll have to decide between giving up on article marketing (since you haven't got anything new to say) or finding creative ways of rehashing what you've already written.

      Since you're in it for the money, the only logical thing to do is start rehashing content. You'll do it creatively at first, and maybe it won't be too noticeable at the beginning - but the further into the year you go, the more often you'll repeat yourself.

      Basically, the way EzineArticles is structured, it forces you to back yourself into a corner until spinning the same old stuff is literally all you can do to keep the traffic going. With everyone else doing exactly the same thing, the directory becomes an utter mess of plagiarized, rehashed, and spun content that is nearly identical and creates no value to the end user. Its sole purpose is to be on the front page for a few minutes and thus send a few curious visitors your way - once that is accomplished, an article is useless (unless SEO optimized).

      To hit the jackpot and have an article that spreads virally and boosts your credibility (credibility by publishing to EZA? Really? Oxymoron, anyone?) you don't just need to be good - you need to be plain lucky.
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      • Profile picture of the author yourreviewer
        Originally Posted by George Chernikov View Post

        If you write one article a day for 365 days, you will run out of original contest by about day 20.
        What makes you think you will run out of original content? Here is an example. Say I am building a website in the dating market, you can write on a plethora of topics.

        1. Dating tips for men
        2. Dating tips for women
        3. Dating tips for women over 30
        4. Dating tips for women over 40
        5. Dating tips for men over 40
        6. Dating tips for men over 50
        7. Dating tips for shy men
        8. Dating tips for shy women
        9. Dating tips for single moms
        10. Dating tips for single dads
        11. Dating tips for shy guys
        12. Dating tips for shy girls
        13. How to overcome dating anxiety
        14. Unique date Ideas
        15. Online dating tips for men
        16. Online dating tips for women
        17. Speed dating
        18. Dos and Dont's of online dating
        19. How to ask a woman out
        20. How to ask a guy out
        21. How to kiss a girl on the first date
        ......

        You get the idea?

        Moreover submitting to ezine articles or other article directories should be done after you post great quality content on your website/blog first- something that I initially didn't know and do due to bad advice and for the most part my stupidity.
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        • Profile picture of the author Tspringer
          Alexa,


          THANK YOU. I really appreciate the time you took for that reply. I am learning...



          Terry
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        • Profile picture of the author George Chernikov
          Originally Posted by yourreviewer View Post

          What makes you think you will run out of original content? Here is an example. Say I am building a website in the dating market, you can write on a plethora of topics.

          1. Dating tips for men
          2. Dating tips for women
          3. Dating tips for women over 30
          4. Dating tips for women over 40
          5. Dating tips for men over 40
          6. Dating tips for men over 50
          7. Dating tips for shy men
          8. Dating tips for shy women
          9. Dating tips for single moms
          10. Dating tips for single dads
          11. Dating tips for shy guys
          12. Dating tips for shy girls
          13. How to overcome dating anxiety
          14. Unique date Ideas
          15. Online dating tips for men
          16. Online dating tips for women
          17. Speed dating
          18. Dos and Dont's of online dating
          19. How to ask a woman out
          20. How to ask a guy out
          21. How to kiss a girl on the first date
          ......

          You get the idea?

          Moreover submitting to ezine articles or other article directories should be done after you post great quality content on your website/blog first- something that I initially didn't know and do due to bad advice and for the most part my stupidity.
          Yes, you are correct - if you are building a generalist website; but if that's your intention, you're up against very serious competition. Which is why a lot of marketers choose to operate in a specific niche (e.g., get your ex back). And the more you focus on a niche market, the more you limit yourself in terms of content you can cover. Again, let's say you work in the "Get your ex back" niche - do you really think anyone could write 365 unique content articles on that?
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          • Profile picture of the author yourreviewer
            Originally Posted by George Chernikov View Post

            Yes, you are correct - if you are building a generalist website; but if that's your intention, you're up against very serious competition. Which is why a lot of marketers choose to operate in a specific niche (e.g., get your ex back). And the more you focus on a niche market, the more you limit yourself in terms of content you can cover. Again, let's say you work in the "Get your ex back" niche - do you really think anyone could write 365 unique content articles on that?
            I understand what you mean. But why not tie it up with other relevant topics so that you can provide more value to your prospects and customers.

            For example: when someone is looking to get their ex back, they is a lot of help and relevant products that you can offer them.

            1. They are depressed
            2. They are low on confidence and self-esteem
            3. They may want to apologize but don't know how
            4. They may want to know if they should be dating
            5. They may have cheated on their ex or their ex may have cheated on them and now you get into the life after infidelity niche
            6. And after a particular time period when they are not back with their ex, they are back to the single status which means you can offer them dating advice and if they are back with their ex, you can offer them advice on how to further strengthen their relationships

            You can dig a lot deeper than you think and it is for this reason segmenting your lists will be really helpful. I am looking to use optin quiz softwares to segment my lists.
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            • Profile picture of the author George Chernikov
              Originally Posted by yourreviewer View Post

              I understand what you mean. But why not tie it up with other relevant topics so that you can provide more value to your prospects and customers.

              For example: when someone is looking to get their ex back, they is a lot of help and relevant products that you can offer them.

              1. They are depressed
              2. They are low on confidence and self-esteem
              3. They may want to apologize but don't know how
              4. They may want to know if they should be dating
              5. They may have cheated on their ex or their ex may have cheated on them and now you get into the life after infidelity niche
              6. And after a particular time period when they are not back with their ex, they are back to the single status which means you can offer them dating advice and if they are back with their ex, you can offer them advice on how to further strengthen their relationships

              You can dig a lot deeper than you think and it is for this reason segmenting your lists will be really helpful. I am looking to use optin quiz softwares to segment my lists.
              Very good point and you're right - there's certainly more room for concentric diversification than I previously allowed for.
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      • Profile picture of the author ELK
        Originally Posted by George Chernikov View Post

        If you write one article a day for 365 days, you will run out of original contest by about day 20.
        That's what research is for! C'mon, let yourself get creative

        Use vignettes

        do a "top 5", "top 3", "top whatever"

        do "mistakes you can't make"

        find some unexpected connections to another topic and flesh those out

        use the "related searches" on Google (that's functioning again)

        or just type out your keyword in the Google search box and let the auto-filler thing add some interesting words after it. Go through the alphabet - "basketball a...", basketball b...", and so on. Truly, keywords you would have never thought of.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joshua Rigley
    Banned
    It's about time. Let's thank Google for their algorithm change, else this would not have happened.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tspringer
    I really do not understand something.

    If google has slapped EZA and others down, meaning google is no longer giving juice to article links coming from EZA or Hubpages or the others, then what exactly is the point in submitting new articles to those repositories regardless of how great or long the article is?

    It seems to me that even if you post a 1500 word pulitzer prize winning article, its not going to serve the purpose now of giving juice to a backlink because google is slapping EZA in its entirety. Seems if this is true, EZA is now basically worthless as a backlinking tool.

    What am I missing?

    I am in the early stages of planning and building an authority site. I had planned to write and contract out the writing of a large number of very high value quality articles both for the purpose of providing required content for the site itself and for use in places like EZA for backlinking purposes.

    I will of course still need the content for the site, but whats the point in posting articles to EZA or other such places?



    Terry
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Tspringer View Post

      If google has slapped EZA and others down, meaning google is no longer giving juice to article links coming from EZA or Hubpages or the others, then what exactly is the point in submitting new articles to those repositories regardless of how great or long the article is?
      An article directory is a depository of content to which webmasters and ezine/newsletter compilers go to source freely available content to syndicate for their websites/ezines.

      That's why article directories exist, and what they've always been there for.

      My purpose in submitting all my articles to EZA (after publishing them myself and having them indexed on my own sites, obviously) isn't to get backlinks from EZA. That was a forlorn task indeed before Google's recent algorithm change anyway, because all article directory backlinks have always been non-context-relevant PR-0 backlinks anyway. That hasn't changed. I don't want the EZA copies of my articles to rank well. That's not why I've put them there at all. I want the copies on my own sites to rank well.

      Originally Posted by Tspringer View Post

      It seems to me that even if you post a 1500 word pulitzer prize winning article, its not going to serve the purpose now of giving juice to a backlink
      For many of us here, that was never its purpose anyway.

      And the great majority of those who did have that as their purpose never made a living from article marketing anyway, and were never going to.

      Originally Posted by Tspringer View Post

      Seems if this is true, EZA is now basically worthless as a backlinking tool.

      What am I missing?
      You're missing the fact that it was basically worthless as a backlinking tool anyway, and that's not what "article marketing" is all about, and actually never has been.

      I know the forum's full of people who could get EZA articles to rank higher than their own sites, but that's hardly a recommendation for the business model. Unless you want to spend all your time sending traffic to article directories instead of getting traffic from them, and building up someone else's business at the expense of your own.

      Possibly, just possibly, this will turn out to be a really good thing, collectively, for many people here as it will finally encourage them to stop thinking of article directories as "backlinking tools" (a task for which they've always been extremely poorly equipped anyway, for entirely logical and understandable reasons!). :rolleyes: :p
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      • Profile picture of the author Ernie Mitchell
        Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

        What if they could devise a system that incentivized both longer content AND high quality content?


        Currently the article directories are at cross purposes with themselves. As Alexa Smith stated in her post (below) --- the article directories were intended for syndication --- not as a source for link juice.

        I don't feel the directories problems will ever be solved until people are forced to stop using/considering them as backlink farms. As long as there is a perceived link juice advantage pseudo authors will continue to attempt to post short, poorly written Potboiler (Google "Potboiler") content instead of using the directories as a plaza to spread their best wares.

        I almost mentioned/suggested this in my previous post on this thread but wimped for fear of starting WWIII. However, if I'm reading Alexa's post (below) properly is appears there is very little, if any link juice at stake anyway. If this is the case then Chris Knight (IMHO) should openly declare the backlinks as no-follow and solve the problem. By reverting back to the original intent of the directories as syndication venues there would be no incentive to attempt to post potboiler content and short content would once again become quality content.

        A short aside. Living in the north woods on the Minnesota Ontario boarder as I do I have a large air-tight wood burning stove in front of my work area. On top of the stove is a black cast iron cauldron ("pot") that I keep there to remind me NOT to write "Potboiler" content.


        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

        An article directory is a depository of content to which webmasters and ezine/newsletter compilers go to source freely available content to syndicate for their websites/ezines.
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post


        That's why article directories exist, and what they've always been there for.

        My purpose in submitting all my articles to EZA (after publishing them myself and having them indexed on my own sites, obviously) isn't to get backlinks from EZA. That was a forlorn task indeed before Google's recent algorithm change anyway, because all article directory backlinks have always been non-context-relevant PR-0 backlinks anyway. That hasn't changed. I don't want the EZA copies of my articles to rank well. That's not why I've put them there at all. I want the copies on my own sites to rank well.

        For many of us here, that was never its purpose anyway.

        And the great majority of those who did have that as their purpose never made a living from article marketing anyway, and were never going to.

        You're missing the fact that it was basically worthless as a backlinking tool anyway, and that's not what "article marketing" is all about, and actually never has been.

        I know the forum's full of people who could get EZA articles to rank higher than their own sites, but that's hardly a recommendation for the business model. Unless you want to spend all your time sending traffic to article directories instead of getting traffic from them, and building up someone else's business at the expense of your own.

        Possibly, just possibly, this will turn out to be a really good thing, collectively, for many people here as it will finally encourage them to stop thinking of article directories as "backlinking tools" (a task for which they've always been extremely poorly equipped anyway, for entirely logical and understandable reasons!).

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      • Profile picture of the author kaweenbee1
        Alexa,

        Well said! Excellent perspective on this situation.
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  • Profile picture of the author 1960Texan
    From the email:

    Increased Quality Checks - We've doubled the review time per article that our Editors are allowed to focus on format, grammar, spelling, and consistency.

    "per article that our Editors" should have read:
    "per article so that our editors"

    I know I'll be accused of nitpicking, but guess what?
    1. The point of the email was that they were making big changes to elevate the quality of the site.
    2. They sent it out to thousands of people without bothering to make sure the email was free of grammatical errors.
    I'm not saying I haven't made my share of grammatical errors, but when I do something that's as important to my business as that email was to Ezine, I make damn sure that I pay attention to detail.

    Will
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  • Profile picture of the author CatherineC
    Banned
    Anyone watching their traffic from older articles sees the exact same drop off that the main domain is seeing, approximately a 35-40% total reduction.

    I track several of my client's views for them, in addition to "researching" other Authors who have had articles in the DB for years and generated millions of views.

    All of their traffic is down equally (-35%) versus the two-week period I monitored before the slap.

    Yes people are "still getting views". But instead of say 4,000 views per day, their prized asset of those thousands of articles are only generating 2,500 views per day now.

    This hasn't changed since Friday's traffic level, meaning no, they are not rising back up in the SERPS.

    It is what it is, unfortunately this manual beatdown on a few 2.0 directories and sites will have permanent and long-reaching impact for those who had relied on an existing trove of articles written over years past. Those rankings (and subsequent views) are never coming back.

    The only way around it is to:

    1. Diversify your traffic generation, obviously. Time to get that book on "YouTube Marketing" back out of the dusty areas on your hard drive and read it. Or your "Forum Marketing" book. Or whatever. Plenty of good ways to get free traffic that don't hang your fate on the overly persecuted article directories.

    2. Increase your article submissions moving forward, but at a higher quality level. No, not the higher quality level EZA is now mandating, I mean truely superior articles.

    Which means 600+ words, no spun versions anywhere else on the web (yes google sees their obvious footprint), content that is informative enough to attract (and make easier) syndication, and an overall strategy that is less dependent upon purely being an article factory for clicks, and more about generating actual VALUE for the reader.

    I'm surprised this is actually affecting as many writers on the board as it seems to be, you all long ago should have minimized 2.0 congregators as your primary traffic sources.

    After Squidoo, Hubpages, GoArticles, and a few other 2.0 sites got their PR slapped a year ago (or is it 2 now...time flies) that was the warning shot that most of us listened to which said "this model will not be sustainable forever..."

    Plenty of great traffic sources out there, particularly if you're listening to people like Bill (tpw), Alexa, TimG, StephenW, Zeus66, and plenty of other people who are NOT running around screaming "the sky is falling" just because EZA got a spanking...
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  • Profile picture of the author clever7
    Honestly, I don't see what difference raising the minimum word count to 400 will make, as a lot of the products about writing for clicks advised you to write around 350-400 words.


    I was looking for information about a certain topic, and I found 3 articles written by an EA's author, which had similar titles and content. Each article was only 250 words, and each word written in each article was totally empty.

    More than ridiculous...

    Each article was composed by 3 paragraphs, and there was nothing substantial anywhere.

    Depressing and comic.




    I, as a mass article submitter to EZA; feel responsible for all this. Surely it wasn't just me but hundreds of other high-volume submitters submitting the same thing over and over again - but even then, if it's not because of me then it's because of people LIKE me.

    I am the exact thing that EZA is trying to get rid of - and I have definitely deserved it. For a long time I have been trying to convince myself to stop doing this, because it's not a business plan, but it just earned me a lot of money so I couldn't stop.

    Now Google slapped them, meaning people like me wouldn't be able to make money by doing this even if EZA didn't bring those new regulations, and I actually feel... relieved.

    Well, even if each individual article I wrote were of much higher quality than the crap being posted to EZA, I still feel sorry for being an idiot and putting quantity over quality wherever I could.

    Sorry EZA and sorry EZA authors who had been submitting original and quality articles that got lost in the shadow of the massive number of articles I have sent for the last 1.5 years!
    I forgive you, but you are not responsible for doing what you did. We must blame the ridiculous acceptance of articles like yours by the Ezinearticle's editors. However, this was not their fault because they were obeying orders. In fact, we must blame Christopher Knight for the acceptance of ridiculous articles that shouldn't have been published.

    I'm one of the best EA's authors (since 2007). I love this article directory. When I first saw it, it was totally different from what it became today. I loved talking with other authors at EA's blog. Our conversations had value. We exchanged ideas, the same way we do here at the Warrior forum. However...

    Ezinearticles became an online store.

    It's really a shame that such a wonderful article directory belongs to someone who has no capacity to preserve its reputation.
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    • Profile picture of the author Talinn
      Originally Posted by clever7 View Post


      I forgive you, but you are not responsible for doing what you did. We must blame the ridiculous acceptance of articles like yours by the Ezinearticle's editors. However, this was not their fault because they were obeying orders. In fact, we must blame Christopher Knight for the acceptance of ridiculous articles that shouldn't have been published.

      I'm one of the best EA's authors (since 2007). I love this article directory. When I first saw it, it was totally different from what it became today. I loved talking with other authors at EA's blog. Our conversations had value. We exchanged ideas, the same way we do here at the Warrior forum. However...

      Ezinearticles became an online store.

      It's really a shame that such a wonderful article directory belongs to someone who has no capacity to preserve its reputation.
      Thanks for the forgiveness. :p My articles were never "ridiculous", though - they were just rewritten articles. I can say that from my 2000 published articles, around 100 were "unique". The rest were all rewritten - rehashed from those 100 articles. By themselves my articles were always of high quality and never sounded ridiculous, but they were if you compared them to my old articles.

      Yeah, about the "derivative content" issue (which is the heart of the problem), about one year ago there was supposed to be a crackdown on it, and frankly I was worried then, but nothing happened. I know why now - because they weren't slapped by Google back then, and their traffic kept rising, so they touched nothing. Just look at their Alexa ranks... keeps rising all the way through 2009 and 2010.

      Now they are slapped and they have panicked tremendously. And they should.

      I don't feel guilty for what I have done, really. I haven't done anything unethical, I haven't fooled anyone, I sent my articles to them, they looked at and accepted them to the website. And that made me money. So who can really blame me for doing this?
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  • Profile picture of the author dsiomtw
    I'm sort of surprised there's so much discussion going on here. There really isn't much to talk about. EZA is a content farm, which overall provides VERY little value to the end users. That is why they got slapped. Simple.

    There are really only a few key changes that one needs to make to the EZA model to completely change this fatal flaw. While the article marketers may bitch and moan now (about content length, uniqueness, whether links pass juice or not etc.), it's just a matter of time and eventually all article marketers will be happy with the coming changes that they are moaning about now, because they really have no choice.

    There is a huge opportunity here for EZA to lead the charge, but so far based on their proposed changes they are totally missing "it". So far it looks like they are primarily concerned about the short term money and trying to make up for what they've just lost. While money is obviously hard to ignore, I think this is the wrong strategy for EZA to take. If they aren't careful someone is going to eat their lunch.
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    • Profile picture of the author alexanderpoole9
      Banned
      Originally Posted by dsiomtw View Post

      I'm sort of surprised there's so much discussion going on here. There really isn't much to talk about. EZA is a content farm, which overall provides VERY little value to the end users. That is why they got slapped. Simple.

      There are really only a few key changes that one needs to make to the EZA model to completely change this fatal flaw. While the article marketers may bitch and moan now (about content length, uniqueness, whether links pass juice or not etc.), it's just a matter of time and eventually all article marketers will be happy with the coming changes that they are moaning about now, because they really have no choice.

      There is a huge opportunity here for EZA to lead the charge, but so far based on their proposed changes they are totally missing "it". So far it looks like they are primarily concerned about the short term money and trying to make up for what they've just lost. While money is obviously hard to ignore, I think this is the wrong strategy for EZA to take. If they aren't careful someone is going to eat their lunch.
      It is one site on the entire Internet - and a hugely successful one at that. Their business model has thrived for more than 10 years. They are dependent on Google for their revenue so they placate them. It's an Adsense site and operates like one. It's not much more complicated than that.
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      • Profile picture of the author dsiomtw
        Originally Posted by alexanderpoole9 View Post

        It is one site on the entire Internet - and a hugely successful one at that. Their business model has thrived for more than 10 years. They are dependent on Google for their revenue so they placate them. It's an Adsense site and operates like one. It's not much more complicated than that.
        Agreed. Why they've been given a pass for so long we'll never know, although I'm sure a lot of it has to do with money. But at the end of the day EZA is worse than your average MFA site if you ask me. At least most MFA sites have unique content. EZA provides absolutely no real value to anyone and just clutters up the serps with millions of pages of duplicate content. EZA is DEAD if they don't completely change their model 180 degrees. Bet on it. Chris Knight claims only 50% of their traffic comes from search - I don't believe that for a millisecond. The only people who have bookmarked EZA are article writers.
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        • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
          Banned
          Originally Posted by dsiomtw View Post

          EZA is DEAD if they don't completely change their model 180 degrees. Bet on it.
          Strange how very consistently it seems people have said this for a decade, especially when Google's breathed or got out of the wrong side of the bed - while, all that time, EZA has thrived, grown, expanded and taken on its now-so-large staff of employees.

          Originally Posted by dsiomtw View Post

          Chris Knight claims only 50% of their traffic comes from search - I don't believe that for a millisecond.
          You don't?

          And I thought I was a skepchick.

          I was pretty surprised that he said it was as high as 50%.

          I'm as sure as I can be that far, far fewer than 50% of the people there reading my articles come from search engines. And I'm very happy about that, because all the ones coming from search engines I naturally want coming to my site, not going to an AdSense-farm article directory, where I'll lose such a high proportion of them. As is true for most professional article marketers, those aren't the ones I'm writing for or thinking of at all, when I submit there.

          I'm writing for the other ones, the majority who don't go there from search engines.

          Originally Posted by dsiomtw View Post

          The only people who have bookmarked EZA are article writers.
          That'll certainly come as a huge surprise to all the webmasters I know who've bookmarked EZA and use it every day for its intended purpose.

          Do you actually know what an article directory IS, Dsiomtw? Do you understand why they exist?! (Or do you just think of them as a potential source of traffic and backlinks for your articles?).
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          • Profile picture of the author notrichyet
            I have to agree with Alexa, I would much rather see that traffic coming directly to my website as opposed to going to an Ezine article. I have to say that I'm pleased with the results of the recent change at Google. I'm seeing some of my sites that are for competitive niches move much higher in the rankings as a result. I say onward and upward.

            Cheers!!!

            Mary
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          • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
            I don't think EZA is dead by any means, Alexa...not by a long shot. I do, however, think that they are in a bit of a predicament--I really can't devise a solution without figuring out how it wouldn't cut into their revenue somewhat. Now, it seems like there's no way for us to know what exact ration of quality to non-quality exists over thread. In another thread, someone mentioned that 99% of their database was garbage...I don't think I'd take it THAT far, however, there does seem to be diverging perception about how bad things REALLY are....

            Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

            Strange how very consistently it seems people have said this for a decade, especially when Google's breathed or got out of the wrong side of the bed - while, all that time, EZA has thrived, grown, expanded and taken on its now-so-large staff of employees.



            You don't?

            And I thought I was a skepchick.

            I was pretty surprised that he said it was as high as 50%.

            I'm as sure as I can be that far, far fewer than 50% of the people there reading my articles come from search engines. And I'm very happy about that, because all the ones coming from search engines I naturally want coming to my site, not going to an AdSense-farm article directory, where I'll lose such a high proportion of them. As is true for most professional article marketers, those aren't the ones I'm writing for or thinking of at all, when I submit there.

            I'm writing for the other ones, the majority who don't go there from search engines.



            That'll certainly come as a huge surprise to all the webmasters I know who've bookmarked EZA and use it every day for its intended purpose.

            Do you actually know what an article directory IS, Dsiomtw? Do you understand why they exist?! (Or do you just think of them as a potential source of traffic and backlinks for your articles?).
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanjm
    All this talk of "quality" confuses me. Google uses computer programs to determine "quality," therefore it can't really judge crap from gold. If EZA was full of Hemingway-level articles, do you really think that would affect the rankings of EZA? No, it wouldn't.

    Until Google changes their algorithm used to categorize content farm sites, EZA is going to stay where it's at and continue to be penalized/devalued. I don't see how changes to EZ's article guidelines will do anything until and unless Google changes their algorithm or makes a manual adjustment to EZA.
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  • Profile picture of the author WareTime
    "2. WP Plugin and API - We will no longer be accepting article submissions via these tools.
    "

    Looks like they got smart and closed the sewer pipe.
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  • Profile picture of the author sugicloud
    wow, EZA really hit hard by Google algorithm. But to think that their articles would pasted to hundreds of low quality blogs and sites, these changes would mean nothing in the eyes of google.
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  • Profile picture of the author lesliequ0
    so ezinearticles going down? they have too many rules theis is why i moved to other article directories
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Originally Posted by lesliequ0 View Post

      so ezinearticles going down? they have too many rules theis is why i moved to other article directories
      That's the problem. You 'appear' to see having rules as a "bad" thing (hence, your moving to other article directories). Yet, it is the rules themselves that, if they had been devised and enforced ALOT earlier would have saved EZA from this mess.

      I'll probably get hammered for this, but this is EXACTLY why IM'ers have a natural propensity to exploit a platform until it meets an untimely demise. And, after years of exploiting it, they'll complain when the site has to enforce rules because the collective content lost authority by falling out of grace with Google. Yes, the more stringent the rules=the less inclined people will be to write for the site....but, it is the rules themselves that will save a site.

      If "too many ruless" is something that upsets you, that's very unfortunate.
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      • Profile picture of the author JamesJeffery
        Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

        That's the problem. You 'appear' to see having rules as a "bad" thing (hence, your moving to other article directories). Yet, it is the rules themselves that, if they had been devised and enforced ALOT earlier would have saved EZA from this mess.

        I'll probably get hammered for this, but this is EXACTLY why IM'ers have a natural propensity to exploit a platform until it meets an untimely demise. And, after years of exploiting it, they'll complain when the site has to enforce rules because the collective content lost authority by falling out of grace with Google. Yes, the more stringent the rules=the less inclined people will be to write for the site....but, it is the rules themselves that will save a site.

        If "too many ruless" is something that upsets you, that's very unfortunate.
        Totally agree.

        I am glad ezine are increasing their rules. It's the abuse from auto submitters/spinners and blackhat WP plugins that have damaged ezine.

        Ezine is the only article site I see as quality. But, with the recent increase in junk on ezine my views were starting to change. I'm glad they have fixed it.

        I honestly put a lot of effort into writing articles and only submit to a handful of quality sites. Sometimes I will write soley for ezine (people will say its bad, but I have my reasons). With the new guidelines in place I now feel as if I'm being treated with some respect by ezine as a publisher.

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        • Profile picture of the author Chris Worner
          Originally Posted by JamesJeffery View Post

          Totally agree.

          I am glad ezine are increasing their rules. It's the abuse from auto submitters/spinners and BlueFart WP plugins that have damaged ezine.
          You completely missed the point of Howie's post.

          *Facepalm*

          When will people start taking responsibility for their actions?

          Chris
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      • Profile picture of the author Chri5123
        Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

        That's the problem. You 'appear' to see having rules as a "bad" thing (hence, your moving to other article directories). Yet, it is the rules themselves that, if they had been devised and enforced ALOT earlier would have saved EZA from this mess.

        I'll probably get hammered for this, but this is EXACTLY why IM'ers have a natural propensity to exploit a platform until it meets an untimely demise. And, after years of exploiting it, they'll complain when the site has to enforce rules because the collective content lost authority by falling out of grace with Google. Yes, the more stringent the rules=the less inclined people will be to write for the site....but, it is the rules themselves that will save a site.

        If "too many ruless" is something that upsets you, that's very unfortunate.
        This ^

        I will give you my take on the whole situation.

        Google wants what they have always wanted - good content on a regular basis.

        Nothing has changed.

        The main thing I think to take away from this situation is that you MUST focus on building your OWN sites and not rely on article directories or anyone else for that matter.

        When you have your own wordpress blog for instance you will want to make sure that you provide REALLY good content - even higher quality then you would send to Ezine.

        All of the articles following the same format - 250 words and no real tips has caused this to happen.

        There will be other killer sites rising up and then it will happen again.

        My advice - start building YOUR empire and not someone else's.

        Chris
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    • Profile picture of the author turbostar52
      Originally Posted by lesliequ0 View Post

      so ezinearticles going down? they have too many rules theis is why i moved to other article directories
      Ezinearticles is not the only article directory going down. Other ones are going down too. There's no getting around the Google slap. Why? Because the PhD mathematicians are no longer tolerating thin content nor regurgitated content from writers controlled by greed. Here is the solution: develop your own authority site, using only unique content. This requires greed to be set aside.
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  • Profile picture of the author AzzamS
    I have been looking at a few sites that I own especially one that has over 10,000 visitors a month. I saw it drop hard on traffic, but the interesting thing is that it got fresh quality content continuously but had no back-link.

    SEO work is showing that quality content with back-link is going to still get/maintain ranking.

    ezinearticles is upping the game which is a good thing however I do not think they will gain the reward they want without some more fundamental changes.
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  • Profile picture of the author JordanFrancis
    This has been, and will no doubt continue to be, an interesting thread and turn of events indeed.

    I can only say, oh...what a pickle

    See, I'm actually feeling rather hopeful about it all. That is, these changes and their possible affect on my business. I figure that since I have ceased writing for clicks, any changes that reduce those who do write for clicks can only help me stand out to those I most want to find me.

    If that makes any sense?

    ...

    Poor old EZA though...as a business that thrives on people clicking adsense ads, the more mundane or "crappy" the article, the more likely the visitor will click their ads. Consequently, each time they raise their standards, they also lower their ads CTR.

    Pure speculation of course...
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    • Profile picture of the author Diane S
      Originally Posted by JordanFrancis View Post

      ...Poor old EZA though...as a business that thrives on people clicking adsense ads, the more mundane or "crappy" the article, the more likely the visitor will click their ads. Consequently, each time they raise their standards, they also lower their ads CTR.

      Pure speculation of course...
      I think you got it exactly right...
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  • Profile picture of the author notrichyet
    I had some more thoughts on the subject. I've tried to advise some of my clients that getting too promotional is not going to have long lasting effects. I'll write the content or article in whatever fashion they request, but I'm trying to steer them in the direction of offering valuable information versus fluffing up a product. I've actually had an increase in the number of people asking if I can help them achieve platinum status. I think they're losing sight of the intention of the new rules. I believe someone mentioned earlier that getting Platinum status shouldn't be the goal and I have to agree. If once you achieve Platinum status you're not providing quality content, then what's the purpose? Clearly, Ezine articles are not showing up in the SERPS like they were a week ago so as Alex pointed out it should be used as a way to get your content syndicated and not be relied upon for traffic generation.
    I think the bottom line is, like any industry, there are going to be shifts and changes to the way we do things and having the ability to morph and move with the change is going to be vital to success.
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  • Profile picture of the author HaydenR
    I'm honestly quite glad that this happened.. it could be much worse..
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    • Profile picture of the author garben2011
      So not much in the way of any real changes being made as far as I can see.

      My new plan was to target writing 300- to 400-word short articles instead of the 600- to 800-word articles. Actually, my average published article seems to have around 627 words. Why? Because I intentionally went back through each to streamline it and try to shorten the articles (because after all... all of the article marketing gurus' materials I read said the shorter the better).

      I find it much easier to write an 800-word article than to write a 400-word article. Heck, it takes 200 words just for me to get a good intro and get "warmed up" so to speak. Or maybe I just like to ramble on.

      Anyway, I don't really think quality can be measured realistically on the length of an article but I use that term to describe length of the articles as well since it seems like quality has now become associated with word count.

      But, I am thinking all the spammers need to do is make some tweaks and their automated content-harvesting software will be sure to grab at least 400 words and spin it like crazy before republishing it. Yeah, that is kind of a lame joke but I think you see my point there about measuring quality on word count is maybe not the most ideal way.

      Anyway, seems to be no change as far as I can see in how I use article marketing except I can now save time and not work so hard to reduce the size of my articles. I'll still edit and clean them and condense them within reason but not spend time intentionally chopping them down to size.

      So, overall this is a great thing. No restrictions. And actually easier than what I was doing.

      The weird thing is one of my niche sites the main source of traffic was from my articles at EZA and the traffic has not changed at all from last week. Whether that is just because I do not spend time targeting niches such as How to Get Your Ex Back and How to Train Your Puppy or is because with all of the crap out of the search results my site is now getting better rankings I don't know... haven't checked.

      But anyway, I see no real effect of this update on traffic and also when I do a search on Google I still see a ton of crap out there. I notice a huge number of keyword focused domains on the first pages now. Maybe they will be the next target?
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  • Profile picture of the author KristofferIM
    I guess they're trying to recover since the Google algo update. Can't blame them though. This might mean that people will have fewer articles on ezine, might get more out of those articles if they're high quality though.
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Originally Posted by KristofferIM View Post

      I guess they're trying to recover since the Google algo update. Can't blame them though. This might mean that people will have fewer articles on ezine, might get more out of those articles if they're high quality though.
      It appears like some kind of article "gutting"/mass deletion of garbage content will be necessary. It will be interesting to see how exactly this will be conducted. Will users be notified and given an opportunity to "fix" articles? Are some articles even "fixable"?
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

        It appears like some kind of article "gutting"/mass deletion of garbage content will be necessary. It will be interesting to see how exactly this will be conducted.
        It would be such a pleasure to get rid of some of the crap of them that I'd do it for half my normal hourly rate. Are you reading this thread, Chris?
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      • Profile picture of the author NicoleBeckett
        Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

        It appears like some kind of article "gutting"/mass deletion of garbage content will be necessary. It will be interesting to see how exactly this will be conducted. Will users be notified and given an opportunity to "fix" articles? Are some articles even "fixable"?
        I've been wondering the same thing! Will they simply go in and automatically delete anything that isn't 400 words?

        There is so much stuff on there that it seems like it would take a small army to go through it all, notify the author for problem articles, and re-approve them. And, not to mention the high rate of utter trash content on there that isn't even fixable. As long as that stuff is on there, I don't see them being able to fully correct the problem.

        It will be a very interesting chain of events, indeed.
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        • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
          Originally Posted by NicoleBeckett View Post

          I've been wondering the same thing! Will they simply go in and automatically delete anything that isn't 400 words?

          There is so much stuff on there that it seems like it would take a small army to go through it all, notify the author for problem articles, and re-approve them. And, not to mention the high rate of utter trash content on there that isn't even fixable. As long as that stuff is on there, I don't see them being able to fully correct the problem.

          It will be a very interesting chain of events, indeed.
          In my head, I have a list of about 10 ways they can effectively address this...all with varying consequences. If they are looking to maintain their business, I just don't see a realistic way to address these issues without cutting into their bottom line big time no matter how they approach it.

          One thing is for sure, if mass article deletions occur, and the writers whose articles are deleted aren't informed, you will have ALOT of very upset people--the implications for their site and brand could be monumental.
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          • Profile picture of the author bhuff85
            Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

            In my head, I have a list of about 10 ways they can effectively address this...all with varying consequences. If they are looking to maintain their business, I just don't see a realistic way to address these issues without cutting into their bottom line big time no matter how they approach it.

            One thing is for sure, if mass article deletions occur, and the writers whose articles are deleted aren't informed, you will have ALOT of very upset people--the implications for their site and brand could be monumental.
            If I were EZA, I would seriously sit down to think a bit more about some of the bigger changes, rather than just pulling the trigger thinking that it's what Google REALLY wants. In honesty, they should've kept most of the garbage out in the first place. I can't tell you how many piss poor articles I've seen get through AFTER all these "crisis changes" they've made over the past few days.

            I've written a couple articles since, both around 500+ words in length and of usual quality as I've always written. Both were declined for not being "unique and original", yet I saw nearly 20 different articles in my niche get approved that same day with grammatical errors and the same stuff repeated over and over. Didn't make much sense, but it is what it is. I just think EZA is in panic mode and doesn't know where they stand at this point, as it's too early still to tell.

            All I have to say is that those who wasted so much time building backlinks to their articles....man, that's gotta be bad right now. I never got into that stuff. It's MY website that I want links going to, not someone else's. I understand the idea to a certain extent, but when it comes down to it, linking to your own web properties doesn't only make sense, but it's the best way to go in terms of longevity.
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            • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
              Everytime I read a post about someone saying that EZA "should've kept most of the garbage out in the first place", I just want to bang my head against a wall. Not because of the post, of course, but because this is so fundamental that it shouldn't have been completely ignored by people of the caliber of Chris Knight and Seth Godin is in there too.

              From the get go, "keeping that garbage out" needs to be fundamental to the business model. Sure, it'll be a slow and steady rise to the top, and low revenue for a while, but this adherence is how you build something sustainable.

              How long has EZA been around?

              Now they have years of mess to clean up. :-/

              Anyone think Chris is monitoring this forum?

              Bring a few of us Warriors aboard, and we'll fix this mess. Can't guarantee the same level of revenue, but we can get you back to a thriving, high quality, database of content into your business model.

              Originally Posted by bhuff85 View Post

              If I were EZA, I would seriously sit down to think a bit more about some of the bigger changes, rather than just pulling the trigger thinking that it's what Google REALLY wants. In honesty, they should've kept most of the garbage out in the first place. I can't tell you how many piss poor articles I've seen get through AFTER all these "crisis changes" they've made over the past few days.

              I've written a couple articles since, both around 500+ words in length and of usual quality as I've always written. Both were declined for not being "unique and original", yet I saw nearly 20 different articles in my niche get approved that same day with grammatical errors and the same stuff repeated over and over. Didn't make much sense, but it is what it is. I just think EZA is in panic mode and doesn't know where they stand at this point, as it's too early still to tell.

              All I have to say is that those who wasted so much time building backlinks to their articles....man, that's gotta be bad right now. I never got into that stuff. It's MY website that I want links going to, not someone else's. I understand the idea to a certain extent, but when it comes down to it, linking to your own web properties doesn't only make sense, but it's the best way to go in terms of longevity.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Ken_Caudill View Post

    Word count has nothing to do with quality.
    This may be perfectly true in itself, but other factors and realities of the marketplace, when it comes to article marketing, force length to be relevant. 250-word articles, regardless of their quality, are simply not going to be syndicated to anything like the same extent as 750+ word articles. In other words, they're not going to produce as much targeted traffic or as many backlinks.

    That's why I (and so many other successful article marketers here, as can be seen by reading all the threads in which "article length" is specifically discussed) so consistently find that, for example, a 900-word article produces in the long run (which is all that matters) far more traffic and backlinks than three 300-word articles of the same quality.

    It's not a "coincidence" that a small-but-growing, successful group of us are building our businesses with longer articles.

    And from an article directory's perspective, of course, there's a big correlation - in reality - between "short articles" and "bad articles", simply because some of the short articles are more or less written for backlinks. (I know it's ironic, to be aiming to "write for backlinks" and then submitting to an article directory, which gives you almost the worst backlinks imaginable, but there you are: that's what people do). And there are still people gullible enough to think about it in purely quantitative terms: if you look at it superficially enough, you might imagine that 900 words divided into 3 articles will give you 3 backlinks instead of 1 (or 6 instead of 2). It's no stretch of the imagination at all to see that people who look at it like that are hardly likely to be among the best writers submitting articles there.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chanman
    Quality - Quality - Quality.
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  • Profile picture of the author seoguru13
    I just realized the changes, when I tried submitting a 300 odd worded article and had to add another few sentences to the article.

    I think this is a good move, as it is high time that quality content gets recognized and spun or duplicate content gets booted. As someone was mentioning on the thread, the problem is because most people consider spending 4-5$ on a quality ezine article a headache. We get one spun, respun and so on till we get a hundred articles for say 10$. EZA would not accept all hundred, but falls prey for a few of them, and hence it gets flooded.

    I am just happy that I got platinum status a couple of weeks ago with 10 straight submissions. Would have been very difficult now.
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      This spinning stuff just absolutely boggles my mind. Every time I read a post, I can't help but think about how utterly naive I am. I'm sure that many people who have read this thread engage in all types of spinning...it just totally cuts out the main ingredient of a quality article.

      Is it possible to have a very high quality article that's also spun?

      If quality is sacrificed, why even do it?

      Originally Posted by seoguru13 View Post

      I just realized the changes, when I tried submitting a 300 odd worded article and had to add another few sentences to the article.

      I think this is a good move, as it is high time that quality content gets recognized and spun or duplicate content gets booted. As someone was mentioning on the thread, the problem is because most people consider spending 4-5$ on a quality ezine article a headache. We get one spun, respun and so on till we get a hundred articles for say 10$. EZA would not accept all hundred, but falls prey for a few of them, and hence it gets flooded.

      I am just happy that I got platinum status a couple of weeks ago with 10 straight submissions. Would have been very difficult now.
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

        Is it possible to have a very high quality article that's also spun?
        Just about, allegedly - if you do it all by hand. But to do it without sacrificing quality takes longer than writing a new article. :rolleyes:
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        • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
          Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

          Just about, allegedly - if you do it all by hand. But to do it without sacrificing quality takes longer than writing a new article. :rolleyes:
          There is an A-list blogger, who earn 5+ figures a month, who I purchase all the IM tools and resources I need from. When I need something, I shoot him over an email asking him to send me his affiliate link.

          One product he recommended that I didn't purchase, though, was some kind of article spinning software. I know it may work for others, however, the thing just look complicated...it looked like it would actually be MORE tedious to use it. It kind of felt like the kid in class who continually struggled just to see an answer on someone else's test. Had he just studied for the test, although it would have taken some time, it would have been alot less of a headache than constantly trying to evade detention or expellation because he had to look off someone else's paper because he wasn't prepared.

          Just kind feels like...not only 'cheating', but, as we are seeing now, more "uneffective cheating"...lol

          I remember myself saying to myself "Had I just written the article myself, it probably would have taken a shorter time than using the software". I'm all about making myself more efficient, and, that software felt like it would have made me LESS efficient AND I would have paid for it = not a good investment, IMHO.
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          • Profile picture of the author cypherslock
            Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

            There is an A-list blogger, who earn 5+ figures a month, who I purchase all the IM tools and resources I need from. When I need something, I shoot him over an email asking him to send me his affiliate link.
            Care to share whom that be? I'm curious. Who knows I may grab some of his stuff myself...
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            • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
              Boy, I take one day off and look what I miss!

              Originally Posted by j10nnb View Post

              The 400 word is probably enough with the short attention span of readers now. How many will read more that 3 - 4 paragraphs before they flip some where else. In fact, how many if they saw a 1000 plus word article would even bother staying on the page. The way people seem to want things is quick and in snippets.
              If what I'm reading is true, and there is a direct correlation between spammy articles and shorter length, then 400 may be a good starting point.

              It hasn't affected me at all - most of the time, I need to dial back on the length. I've published articles longer than some of the "ebooks" I've acquired.

              People have short attention spans? Are these the same people who will spend hours playing the same video game?

              I'm thinking that for most people, "short attention span" should read more like "unengaging content" (is 'unengaging' a real word?).

              I really don't think a pure length standard will accomplish anything. Just ask any elementary or middle school teacher who has had to grade student essays which had to be a certain minimum length. If you think spinning and padding is bad now, just wait...

              Speaking of spinning and padding, we may need to find a word besides 'unique' to apply to quality original content. The spinner/rewriter clans have usurped the 'unique' to mean any piece of trash that can pass a software test like Copyscape. It may be unreadable crap, but by golly, it's unique!:confused:
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            • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
              Originally Posted by cypherslock View Post

              Care to share whom that be? I'm curious. Who knows I may grab some of his stuff myself...
              He actually doesn't really produce his own products (at least, within the IM niche), he's a killer affiliate though.
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  • Profile picture of the author ZerosToHero
    Has anyone noticed a decrease in article approvals this week? I am not talking personally but with competition in your niche. I haven't written any because I've been working on PPC.

    I'd love it if these new rules cut down the submissions and approvals by half for Ezine. That means more traffic for those that do it the right way instead of getting pushed down the page by junk articles.
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    • Profile picture of the author mailey
      Think I'll give EZA and all the other article directories a wide berth and just submit articles to my own directories for backlinks.
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Originally Posted by JamesAggie View Post

      Has anyone noticed a decrease in article approvals this week? I am not talking personally but with competition in your niche. I haven't written any because I've been working on PPC.

      I'd love it if these new rules cut down the submissions and approvals by half for Ezine. That means more traffic for those that do it the right way instead of getting pushed down the page by junk articles.
      It will be interesting to see what happens, indeed. As mentioned earlier, they may have no other choice but to apply a bit of an "article sweep"/mass content deletion like eHow did. Not sure that I totally agree with this, but, in another thread, a poster mentioned how he believed that 99%+ of EZA's article database is low quality garbage. See...when a viable quality control process isn't applied on a site of this nature, EVERYONE suffers (even the really good writers) from the subsequent slam in search engine authority.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rach72
    Some may have more to worry about than just the quality and length of their articles judging by this latest hit against those who write for niches that are, shall we say, 'popular';

    I can't post the link, but there is a discussion in the latest blog post about whether they should even accept articles from certain niches. These are the current offenders;

    Penis Enlargement
    Get Your Ex Back
    **** Berry
    Reverse Cell Phone Lookup
    Credit Card Debt Relief
    Male Enhancement Pill
    TV for PC
    ('Squidgate' anyone....)
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  • Profile picture of the author J Bold
    I think it's interesting how we are all commenting on what ezine should have done. They should have done this a long time ago, should have done that a long time ago, etc.

    I think they were doing pretty fine for many, many years don't you? They were going with what worked for them, getting tons of free content, some of it good, some of it ok, a lot of it just pretty crappy but they were getting money in their adsense account by the millions.

    If you were them, wouldn't you milk that cow as long and hard and as fast as you could? With the amount of money the site owners have made I would think they could just sell the site now and retire. That's what I'd do, no question. Or take the money and save a lot of it and then use some of it to start something else.

    Their model worked for them fantastically for a long time. People have been writing on the wall and nothing has happened to them, until now. They've had blips with other Google changes but I think this is probably one of the biggest traffic drops they've ever had. They just went with what worked until it didn't, and now they have to make changes. Who knows how it will all turn out in the end? I just think it's the tendency when a big guy falls down a bit to kind of say "I told ya so" and all that. But does it really matter what you or I think? Not too much, I'd say.

    Anyway, carry on.
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  • Profile picture of the author Anup Mahajan
    It had to happen. Remember the ultimate aim of Google is to provide better search experience to their users so any site whether it is EZA, Hubpages, Articlebase etc dominating first page results and not providing much value to the users was bound to get slapped by Google. This is not the first time it has happened (remember how Squidoo was slapped few years back?) nor it it the last.

    I am happy this happened since it would force people to focus on quality. Too many people were focusing on quantity instead of quality in the last few years and the result is for everyone to see. So guys focus on quality and you will definitely see great results.

    Regards,
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Great minds think alike, anup. Well written. I do, indeed, remember Squidoo's fall from grace quite well. What we see time and time again....a plethora of case studies are out there...is that platforms choose to be reactive rather than proactive in their approach to quality control and assurance.

      Online graveyards are filled with bodies of those who, for the sake of immediate profit, didn't head the warnings that have been clearly stated by Google for years.

      Not sure if you remember, but, Squidoo's Google slap actually ended up with them completely cutting out several categories that they deemed to encourage low quality content (porn, etc...)

      For as brilliant as Seth Godin and Chris Knight are, I'd like to seriously sit down and talk with them.


      Originally Posted by anup.mahajan View Post

      It had to happen. Remember the ultimate aim of Google is to provide better search experience to their users so any site whether it is EZA, Hubpages, Articlebase etc dominating first page results and not providing much value to the users was bound to get slapped by Google. This is not the first time it has happened (remember how Squidoo was slapped few years back?) nor it it the last.

      I am happy this happened since it would force people to focus on quality. Too many people were focusing on quantity instead of quality in the last few years and the result is for everyone to see. So guys focus on quality and you will definitely see great results.

      Regards,
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      • Profile picture of the author Anup Mahajan
        Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

        Great minds think alike, anup. Well written. I do, indeed, remember Squidoo's fall from grace quite well. What we see time and time again....a plethora of case studies are out there...is that platforms choose to be reactive rather than proactive in their approach to quality control and assurance.

        Online graveyards are filled with bodies of those who, for the sake of immediate profit, didn't head the warnings that have been clearly stated by Google for years.

        Not sure if you remember, but, Squidoo's Google slap actually ended up with them completely cutting out several categories that they deemed to encourage low quality content (porn, etc...)

        For as brilliant as Seth Godin and Chris Knight are, I'd like to seriously sit down and talk with them.
        Well said x3xsolxdierx3x, I do remember how Squidoo made drastic changes to their site after Google slap. I do hope EZA gets its act together and make some tough decisions to weed out low quality articles from their site.

        Regards,
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        • Profile picture of the author paulie888
          Originally Posted by anup.mahajan View Post

          Well said x3xsolxdierx3x, I do remember how Squidoo made drastic changes to their site after Google slap. I do hope EZA gets its act together and make some tough decisions to weed out low quality articles from their site.

          Regards,
          Sometimes it takes drastic measures, like what happened with this latest Google 'slap', for people to come to their senses. EZA has long been at the pinnacle of article directories, and this change was sorely needed for them to maintain their authority status. Even with 40+ % of articles currently being rejected, there's still far too much crap getting on there - hopefully this will put a stop to (or at least drastically lessen) article spinning and cheap article 'factories' that push out drivel.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Worner
    I really do hope they rethink their decision to keep all links DoFollow, simply because it will weed out a good proportion of the junk authors who think creating an article that waffles on around a single keyword to appease the search engines, makes the content valuable and high quality.

    Meaning less competition for those of us who actually create human readable content, and increasing the likelihood of our content being syndicated. Making us more money and building a stable, long term income stream.

    The sad part is, if people used EZA(and the other directories) for their intended purpose by submitting highly valuable content written for human beings(not search engines) for blog and ezine owners to pick-up and syndicate, this crap with Google wouldn't be of any real concern.


    Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author Anup Mahajan
    Paulie I totally agree with you. EZA has been on top for God knows how many years and perhaps it made them complacent. Now it has fallen from the top so let's hope Chris and team can deliver the goods and make it a Google preferred site again.
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      To evade this thread degrading into just a rant for "greater quality", what kind of 'approaches' would you all propose for EZA to begin applying today to deal with this predicament?

      In my mind, now matter what the solution, there WILL an unavoidable chipping away at their bottom. Personally, I think its inevitable regardless of what course of action they choose to take.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulie888
        Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

        To evade this thread degrading into just a rant for "greater quality", what kind of 'approaches' would you all propose for EZA to begin applying today to deal with this predicament?

        In my mind, now matter what the solution, there WILL an unavoidable chipping away at their bottom. Personally, I think its inevitable regardless of what course of action they choose to take.
        Well, the quality control situation needs to be better managed for one thing, as this is at the core of all their present issues. I'm fairly sure that their editors/staff are fairly overtaxed when it comes to the volume of articles they have to evaluate, and this could be causing some articles to slip through the cracks, among other things. While this won't be a popular move, perhaps they may need to hire more editors/staff so that they can properly evaluate articles in a timely and efficient manner?
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    • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
      Originally Posted by anup.mahajan View Post

      Paulie I totally agree with you. EZA has been on top for God knows how many years and perhaps it made them complacent. Now it has fallen from the top so let's hope Chris and team can deliver the goods and make it a Google preferred site again.
      Complacency could be there downfall.

      Now, I don't think they'll go away entirely, but they have some serious issues to resolve, that's for sure. I don't really see a viable course action that wouldn't involve them loosing some revenue...at least for the short term.

      They seriously need to get the quality situation figured out.
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  • Profile picture of the author Nick Sammut
    ezine has to protect their reputation, and unfortunately, like google in the old days, affiliate marketers will spam the crap out of their platform and keep their users away
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    • Profile picture of the author TimG
      Originally Posted by Nick Sammut View Post

      ezine has to protect their reputation, and unfortunately, like google in the old days, affiliate marketers will spam the crap out of their platform and keep their users away
      I don't think you will see as many spam articles getting approved with EZA once they get all of their changes in place.

      Chris is not playing around and I'm almost certain their editorial staff will be overly stringent as they weed out the garbage.

      I'm hoping that they no longer seem a viable target of opportunity for article spammers who will now be forced to peddle their wares elsewhere.

      Personally I'm raising the bar on my own article writing that way I don't need to worry about what EZA plans to do because I will already be exceeding whatever standards they continue to implement.

      Having gone back and relooked the carnage that took place with this latest algorithm change I believe that there are many new opportunities for quality article writers to achieve an even better ROI from their articles.

      Respectfully,
      Tim
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      • Profile picture of the author Anup Mahajan
        Originally Posted by TimG View Post

        Personally I'm raising the bar on my own article writing that way I don't need to worry about what EZA plans to do because I will already be exceeding whatever standards they continue to implement.

        Having gone back and relooked the carnage that took place with this latest algorithm change I believe that there are many new opportunities for quality article writers to achieve an even better ROI from their articles.

        Respectfully,
        Tim
        Tim I am sure that good article writers do not have to worry about any Google slap/algorithm change. On the other hand, people who are writing articles merely to get backlinks have a lot to worry as they now have to focus on writing better content or risk getting banned by EZA.

        Regards
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        • Profile picture of the author paulie888
          Originally Posted by anup.mahajan View Post

          Tim I am sure that good article writers do not have to worry about any Google slap/algorithm change. On the other hand, people who are writing articles merely to get backlinks have a lot to worry as they now have to focus on writing better content or risk getting banned by EZA.

          Regards
          This is why the changes at EZA should work out for the overall good, as they're designed primarily to get rid of the latter group of 'writers' who have not been paying any attention to the quality of the articles that they submit. If the changes occur as intended, then we should be seeing a vastly better EZA in a few months' time, one that is spilling over with many high-quality articles that people actually want to read.
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        • Profile picture of the author TimG
          Originally Posted by anup.mahajan View Post

          Tim I am sure that good article writers do not have to worry about any Google slap/algorithm change. On the other hand, people who are writing articles merely to get backlinks have a lot to worry as they now have to focus on writing better content or risk getting banned by EZA.

          Regards

          They absolutely don't have to worry about this new devlopment. I know Bill Platt is enjoying more traffic from his articles than ever before. I'm sure Alexa is aslo doing quite well. I still have articles rankign well on EZa that continue to drive traffic for me.

          However, where I have seen some fantastic ranking increases is on my own sites that have original content. I'll admit some of the quality is not quite as good as it should be but the content is original and I now have several sites all on the first page for the keywords I was targeting.

          Nothing has really changed....good original content is better then bad unoriginal content.....we all knew that.

          Somebody just forgot to invite Google who finally decided to join our party.

          Respectfully,
          Tim
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          • Profile picture of the author cata
            Originally Posted by TimG View Post

            However, where I have seen some fantastic ranking increases is on my own sites that have original content. I'll admit some of the quality is not quite as good as it should be but the content is original and I now have several sites all on the first page for the keywords I was targeting.
            I bet those keywords have to do with various products or product types where scrapers the likes of thefind.com have been taken down. However, not all is good in Dreamland of people who write unique content. Most of the people working in IM work on Wordpress. Wordpress has a very nasty habit of getting scraped => the scraper sites will often rank higher than the original unique source. If anything, this is going to be the case even more from now on.
            I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying that this might be the effect of this update (ironic, isn't it?).
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            • Profile picture of the author WarriorDad
              Frankly, whatever the motivations were by EZA to enact stricter guidelines, I'm for anything that starts sorting out some of the trash accumulating on the net. The heydays of yesteryear when you could post anything online and be rewarded for it are over. Information consumers are becoming more sophisticated and discriminating than ever before, so the "quality" and "relevance" bars need to be continually raised to satisfy them.

              If that means, then, that IM'ers have to work harder, smarter, or whatever to succeed, then so be it. Providing value to our customers trumps all, and any who fail to heed their call for it will suffer the consequences. The internet is our golden goose and must be protected.
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            • Profile picture of the author TimG
              Originally Posted by cata View Post

              I bet those keywords have to do with various products or product types where scrapers the likes of thefind.com have been taken down. However, not all is good in Dreamland of people who write unique content. Most of the people working in IM work on Wordpress. Wordpress has a very nasty habit of getting scraped => the scraper sites will often rank higher than the original unique source. If anything, this is going to be the case even more from now on.
              I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying that this might be the effect of this update (ironic, isn't it?).

              Good point....my sites are built using static html and not on the wordpress platform which may have helped.

              One thing I found very interesting is I have a site ranking number 1 for it's targeted keyword phrase but I wasn't done building the site.

              I'm not even sure how Google found it or why it was indexed but I am in the process of completing the site.....nothing like going live and getting ranked before your actually ready.

              Respectfully,
              Tim
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      • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
        Hopefully other platforms take notice of what EZA does, and close shop, as well. I have no doubt that Chris isn't playing around-- his business depends on it.

        On the level of the writer, it's a great idea to pay attention to what is going on on the 'macro' level, for sure.

        Originally Posted by TimG View Post

        I don't think you will see as many spam articles getting approved with EZA once they get all of their changes in place.

        Chris is not playing around and I'm almost certain their editorial staff will be overly stringent as they weed out the garbage.

        I'm hoping that they no longer seem a viable target of opportunity for article spammers who will now be forced to peddle their wares elsewhere.

        Personally I'm raising the bar on my own article writing that way I don't need to worry about what EZA plans to do because I will already be exceeding whatever standards they continue to implement.

        Having gone back and relooked the carnage that took place with this latest algorithm change I believe that there are many new opportunities for quality article writers to achieve an even better ROI from their articles.

        Respectfully,
        Tim
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        • Profile picture of the author cata
          Oh my God, I can't believe this. Why don't you let EZA do whatever floats their boat? Why don't you let Google do the same? All this talking and whining is not going to change anything anyway. You can either accept the changes or not, your choice. I particularly like how everyone thinks everybody else is a spammer, but them. Newsflash for you all: you, me, all internet marketers, we are all spammers to one degree or another. Deal with it or change your profession.
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          • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
            Originally Posted by cata View Post

            Oh my God, I can't believe this. Why don't you let EZA do whatever floats their boat? Why don't you let Google do the same? All this talking and whining is not going to change anything anyway. You can either accept the changes or not, your choice. I particularly like how everyone thinks everybody else is a spammer, but them. Newsflash for you all: you, me, all internet marketers, we are all spammers to one degree or another. Deal with it or change your profession.
            Not sure I agree with your reaction/intonation in your post. There is a reciprocal relationship at play here -- what writers do affects EZA and what EZA does affects writers. Discussing it tactfully, as well as potential ways that EZA can address issues that it faces, is a display of caring for our work, the work of others, and the platform's longterm viability.

            All the "talking and whining" CAN provide EZA with real quality feedback from experts in this arena. I don't know if they are monitoring this thread--but, they should be. When you run a business, you are faced with oftentimes difficult decisions to make. Everything impacts something: In EZA's case, the solution they devise will have a direct impact on everything from their branding in the market, to customer loyalty, and their bottom line. Throughout this thread, and other threads, interlaced are viable options presented by experts in this area.

            "we are all spammers to one degree or another."

            I disagree entirely.
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            • Profile picture of the author cata
              Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

              Not sure I agree with your reaction/intonation in your post. There is a reciprocal relationship at play here -- what writers do affects EZA and what EZA does affects writers. Discussing it tactfully, as well as potential ways that EZA can address issues that it faces, is a display of caring for our work, the work of others, and the platform's longterm viability.

              All the "talking and whining" CAN provide EZA with real quality feedback from experts in this arena. I don't know if they are monitoring this thread--but, they should be. When you run a business, you are faced with oftentimes difficult decisions to make. Everything impacts something: In EZA's case, the solution they devise will have a direct impact on everything from their branding in the market, to customer loyalty, and their bottom line. Throughout this thread, and other threads, interlaced are viable options presented by experts in this area.

              "we are all spammers to one degree or another."

              I disagree entirely.
              I agree with you, and this would be applicable in a normal environment. But not here, where Google is a monopoly and does what it wants, EZA feeds off Adsense and has been milking the Adsense cow for years for short term profits without looking at the big picture, and "publishers" who feed off EZA for traffic and/or links. If you ask me, all three parties involved here are hypocritical (to a way greater degree than the norm).
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              • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
                Originally Posted by cata View Post

                I agree with you, and this would be applicable in a normal environment. But not here, where Google is a monopoly and does what it wants, EZA feeds off Adsense and has been milking the Adsense cow for years for short term profits without looking at the big picture, and "publishers" who feed off EZA for traffic and/or links. If you ask me, all three parties involved here are hypocritical (to a way greater degree than the norm).
                lol...are we disagreeing?

                I didn't think I came off as disagreeing in my other post.

                I agree completely, but I think THIS (the bold) is an issue that extends to many other platforms. To those new to this thread, I had posted a link with a list of about 20 or so directories/Web 2.0 sites that were slammed, and to what extent they were slammed.

                THEY failed to look at the big picture.
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                • Profile picture of the author cata
                  Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x View Post

                  lol...are we disagreeing?
                  [...]is an issue that extends to many other platforms. To those new to this thread, I had posted a link with a list of about 20 or so directories/Web 2.0 sites that were slammed, and to what extent they were slammed.
                  Because they were also milking the Adsense cow, a beast that Google unleashed also for their short term profits. But how do you explain that sites like hubpages.com and askthebuilder.com (!!! which is actually a good site !!!) got slapped when they were both in Adsense's success stories page? That's a very intriguing catch 22.
                  Therefore this is where my attitude comes from. They are all hypocrites.
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                  • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
                    Originally Posted by cata View Post

                    Because they were also milking the Adsense cow, a beast that Google unleashed also for their short term profits. But how do you explain that sites like hubpages.com and askthebuilder.com (!!! which is actually a good site !!!) got slapped when they were both in Adsense's success stories page? That's a very intriguing catch 22.
                    Therefore this is where my attitude comes from. They are all hypocrites.
                    I don't know.

                    They didn't control for quality well enough?

                    Google will always look out for its own interests and make a ton of money. I'm not sure that it matters to them which platforms rank high or not.
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                    • Profile picture of the author vfelcett
                      All I know is that I have lost a LOT of traffic with this new change. All of my work was article writing... Time to learn how to build a website and try with that instead... Is Deadbeat Affiliate good for this?
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  • Profile picture of the author pmmteam
    First they provide the services but on the article directory follow the Google monopoly, I prefer to work with less popular directory 10 times more visitor to my site

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  • Profile picture of the author nuruddeen710
    Does Google ignore thin articles or the EZA domain itself? With Google devaluing EZA what's the point for us to submit anymore? This would happen sooner or later and the best thing we all should do from day one is to develop our own sites instead or relying on others.
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    • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
      Originally Posted by nuruddeen710 View Post

      ... the best thing we all should do from day one is to develop our own sites instead or relying on others.
      ^ Quoted for truth.

      You can never control Google and dictate to them how they should rank your sites; but if you control your own properties, you control the level of quality and accuracy of their content. This allows you to better pander to what Google wants, and eliminates the risk of other users contaminating your site's reputation.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by nuruddeen710 View Post

      With Google devaluing EZA what's the point for us to submit anymore?
      It depends why we're submitting.

      Some of us prefer the EZA copies of our articles not to rank too well on Google; we want our own sites to rank well on Google and we're using EZA for the syndication prospects, and we strongly welcome all the recent developments.

      Originally Posted by nuruddeen710 View Post

      the best thing we all should do from day one is to develop our own sites instead or relying on others.
      Absolutely. Quoted for truth again.

      This is why "article marketing" is (and actually always has been) a far better proposition than "article directory marketing".

      But that doesn't necessarily exclude EZA. Far from it. It just excludes depending on EZA for traffic and/or backlinks.

      Originally Posted by JordanFrancis View Post

      Ooh, interesting: that looks nice!
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  • Profile picture of the author aaronngoh
    I certainly welcome this changes that should happen 5 years ago with Ezines

    Just wonder what are some of the immediate changes that is going to happen to other site?

    What about autoblog and PR sites?

    Are they affected too?
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  • Profile picture of the author JordanFrancis
    Another blog update:

    New ‘Diamond’ Account Level Unveiled

    No mention of what they intend to do with those 7 saturated niches, though.
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    • Profile picture of the author TimG
      Originally Posted by JordanFrancis View Post

      Another blog update:

      New 'Diamond' Account Level Unveiled

      No mention of what they intend to do with those 7 saturated niches, though.

      Interesting development but when you read through the blog comments I'm not sure I like how they recommend to someone that they delete articles from their account that were previosuly approved because they are now not up to current standards.

      Still to many uncertainties and craziness going on with EZA at the moment.

      Respectfully,
      Tim
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by TimG View Post

        I'm not sure I like how they recommend to someone that they delete articles from their account that were previosuly approved because they are now not up to current standards.
        Well, no ... I'm not sure I like it, except in so far as it "does the job for them". They should never have accepted so much dreadful stuff in the first place, of course (hence the "too late" part of the "too little, too late"), but as Steve and Jeremy have rightly been saying, they did it to themselves, and I suppose they have to try to recover from it and have judged (and maybe rightly?) that they need to do that.

        At the time, (i.e. over the last decade!) they did what they did "for reasons", I'm sure ... and yes, in a way some of the consequences of that are unfortunate now ... but when all's said and done, they've lasted a decade in a field in which most people last 3 months or something. And Chris Knight is clearly no fool at all. I'm "just saying".

        Call me an optimist, but they'll get it together.
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  • Profile picture of the author AllanWard
    I also just received the email about the new diamond level accounts. The bit I find interesting is how they say the account level can't be purchased - it can only be earned. Personally I think they should charge for it to increase it's perceived level of value. It would seem that this diamond level will be the only way you'll be able to submit articles with <400 words. It'll be something to watch in the future.
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    • Profile picture of the author TimG
      Originally Posted by AllanWard View Post

      I also just received the email about the new diamond level accounts. The bit I find interesting is how they say the account level can't be purchased - it can only be earned. Personally I think they should charge for it to increase it's perceived level of value. It would seem that this diamond level will be the only way you'll be able to submit articles with <400 words. It'll be something to watch in the future.

      Honestly that's the least attractive part about it for me....I don't submit articles less than 400 words and have no plans to do so in the future.

      What I think would have been a much better incentive would have been if they allowed Diamond members to share in their adsense revenue....now that would have sparked some interest in people submitting a higher caliber of content in my opinion.

      Respectfully,
      Tim
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  • Profile picture of the author Cash37
    I will wait to see if they get unpenalized before putting them back in my strategy
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  • Profile picture of the author roley
    Are people still using ezinearticles? I gave up on those chumps a years ago with their lame rules
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