Things are about to change at Ezinearticles

126 replies
  • SEO
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Search Engine Algorithm Changes

Looks like they were definitely hit with the algo changes. Traffic is down significantly...Bad news to all the low value article posters, your content is likely to get rejected.
#change #ezinearticles #things
  • Profile picture of the author wayne60618
    Oh, forgot this little tidbit:

    Articles submitted are currently required to be exclusive to you (ie: Our software and human Editors won't find your article submission on the Internet under someone else's or no name) but they do not need to be exclusive to EzineArticles.com.

    And this:

    We're considering raising the minimum article word count to 400. Currently we give less exposure to articles that are between 250-400 words, but we still accept them. Thin content often comes under 400 words even though I have seen many high quality articles in the 250-400 range, it is rare. 600-850 words may become the new normal with 400 being the minimum.
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    • Profile picture of the author moneycometh
      Hi Wayne,

      I posted an article and was rejected. I know why now, it was because I a PLR article I bought thinking I could simply send it in as is. Learned a valuable lesson there. Do you have additional tips you might suggest for a newbie?
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      • Profile picture of the author TimG
        Originally Posted by moneycometh View Post

        Hi Wayne,

        I posted an article and was rejected. I know why now, it was because I a PLR article I bought thinking I could simply send it in as is. Learned a valuable lesson there. Do you have additional tips you might suggest for a newbie?
        Yup, that is a big no-no with them. Now based on the recent Google algorithm they will be putting a choke hold on all articles in order to try and eliminate low quality articles that provide little to no value.

        Some marketers will see their article marketing ROI disappear overnight others will see it drastically lowered. However, a select group will actually see an increase in their article marketing ROI based on sticking with the basics.

        Respectfully,
        Tim
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Hill
        Originally Posted by moneycometh View Post

        Hi Wayne,

        I posted an article and was rejected. I know why now, it was because I a PLR article I bought thinking I could simply send it in as is. Learned a valuable lesson there. Do you have additional tips you might suggest for a newbie?
        Wherever you bought your PLR articles from did they not stipulate that you must rewrite the article before submitting it or using it?
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        • Profile picture of the author RedEvo
          Article marketers posted their articles on Ezine because Ezine was a respected source (by the search engines) meaning their articles appeared higher than if posted on their own sites. If it's no longer a respected source, and that seems to be the case then it's finished.

          I think it's only got itself to blame for allowing so much rubbish in, it's called greed. Ezine RIP.

          Those who think it's going to rise from the ashes and they will once again dominate the SERPs with their self proclaimed 'quality articles' are dreaming. The party's over guys

          d
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    • Profile picture of the author Peter Gehr
      I'm actually glad to hear that EZA are upping the ante.
      The quality of a lot of their articles is substandard in my opinion, and quite unprofessional in a lot of cases.

      Articles that come in just below the wire are now going to receive greater scrutiny and will be rejected early in the EZA process--and that's such a good thing for the world community as readers, and anyone having to wade through pathetic attempts at content will avail of the new changes.

      Bring it on is all I can say...well, at least for now : )
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike McAleer
    Wow! And now the resource box is also NO Follow now!!
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    • Profile picture of the author wayne60618
      Originally Posted by FreshDomains View Post

      Wow! And now the resource box is also NO Follow now!!
      yeah, pretty crazy. With no link value, they will surely cut down on submissions. The value only comes from the traffic or the syndication.
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      • Profile picture of the author J Bold
        Originally Posted by wayne60618 View Post

        yeah, pretty crazy. With no link value, they will surely cut down on submissions. The value only comes from the traffic or the syndication.
        No follow doesn't mean it has no link value. This is often repeated because you probably heard it somewhere else.
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    • Profile picture of the author HigherPrThanGod
      Originally Posted by FreshDomains View Post

      Wow! And now the resource box is also NO Follow now!!
      And now I'm glad I've avoided Ezine.

      I almost get the feeling that Google's entire algo is dying. They're going full circle and pretty soon they won't have anything special in their results. Especially if Yahoo/Bing would stop charging people for inclusion in their directory and get more crawlers out there. Seriously, it takes them forever to index sites.
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    • Profile picture of the author JunkYour925
      Originally Posted by FreshDomains View Post

      Wow! And now the resource box is also NO Follow now!!
      luckily they just took that BAD idea back. Its struck from their action table. Good for everybody.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Hill
    Personally I think EzineArticles should charge a fee per article to clean up these low quality content producers who muck it up for the rest of us.
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    • Profile picture of the author wayne60618
      Originally Posted by FreshDomains View Post

      Wow! And now the resource box is also NO Follow now!!
      Originally Posted by Mike Hill View Post

      Personally I think EzineArticles should charge a fee per article to clean up these low quality content producers who muck it up for the rest of us.
      Interesting idea...Of course, I think they'd have to take the adsense off, if they charge the writer.
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    • Profile picture of the author HigherPrThanGod
      Originally Posted by Mike Hill View Post

      Personally I think EzineArticles should charge a fee per article to clean up these low quality content producers who muck it up for the rest of us.
      If their traffic and link-juice is diminishing, as well as the links being no-follow, then is it worth paying to get into?
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Hill
        Originally Posted by HigherPrThanGod View Post

        If their traffic and link-juice is diminishing, as well as the links being no-follow, then is it worth paying to get into?
        Obviously they would have to clean things up first by implementing stricter guidelines and getting rid of the junk. Then start charging a nominal fee for each article or each group of articles. If they do this, over time their directory will rise up again.
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      • Profile picture of the author Stephen Crooks
        This, for me is the real question that we should be confronting.. Pretty much everyone agrees that yes, it is great they are dealing with the low quality stuff and yes, we are all going to find it harder to publish with them as a result. The question is, are EzineArticles worth it any more? Google seem to think that they aren't, so why should we?

        Originally Posted by HigherPrThanGod View Post

        If their traffic and link-juice is diminishing, as well as the links being no-follow, then is it worth paying to get into?
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    • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
      Personally I think EzineArticles should charge a fee per article to clean up these low quality content producers who muck it up for the rest of us.
      Yes. Because there is no OTHER site on the internet where people can write and submit a quality piece of content?

      You know there are indeed many sites out there, covering all sorts of particular niches where specialists, writers and people who actually KNOW something about a subject can indeed write and publish their articles? (For free, usually)

      EZA is and never was specialized, its simply FARMING all kinds of content, got rewarded by Google because every piece of idiotic article was potentially able to rank high regardless of actual value, regardless of topic.

      How can this be right? There are niche/topic-sites which have much more insight in regards to a subject/niche...with people actually knowing what they write about. THOSE are the sites which need to rank, not crap sites consisting of merely 250 words articles worth $3.
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      • Profile picture of the author TimG
        Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

        Yes. Because there is no OTHER site on the internet where people can write and submit a quality piece of content?

        You know there are indeed many sites out there, covering all sorts of particular niches where specialists, writers and people who actually KNOW something about a subject can indeed write and publish their articles? (For free, usually)

        EZA is and never was specialized, its simply FARMING all kinds of content, got rewarded by Google because every piece of idiotic article was potentially able to rank high regardless of actual value, regardless of topic.

        How can this be right? There are niche/topic-sites which have much more insight in regards to a subject/niche...with people actually knowing what they write about. THOSE are the sites which need to rank, not crap sites consisting of merely 250 words articles worth $3.
        Great point and those sites should see a boost in their submissions and hopefully will receive some love from Google for their specialized knowledge.

        Respectfully,
        Tim
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    • Profile picture of the author Stephen Crooks
      Indirectly they do from the Adsense revenue they get from our content. A direct fee though from authors would work though but then in return I would expect to have all links have the nofollow removed including links in the article body.

      Originally Posted by Mike Hill View Post

      Personally I think EzineArticles should charge a fee per article to clean up these low quality content producers who muck it up for the rest of us.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by Steve Crooks View Post

        Indirectly they do from the Adsense revenue they get from our content. A direct fee though from authors would work though but then in return I would expect to have all links have the nofollow removed including links in the article body.
        I think this would work and marketers ought not to be short sighted. yes they are other places to post content too but I wouldn't say they are free. it takes time to find them and the good ones you have to jump through hoops for. A moderate fee to be on a site with magazine level content isn't outrageous to me. Many people are paying monthly fees for software just to submit articles.

        I'm working with a content syndication site right now and one of the headaches we have is how to handle the approval process without some gatekeeper. These kinds of sites get slammed with all kinds of garbage content because anyone can submit. It puts a severe human resource load on any company and they have to pay for it. Sorry but to us depending on adsense ads all over the place just cheapens the whole site.
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  • Profile picture of the author TimG
    I read through what Chris and the EZA team plan to do in order to correct the problems/issues that caused them to lose some credability with Google and I salute them.

    All changes will weed out the folks that have gamed EZA and will significantly benefit the authors that have focused on providing quality content.

    Regarding the minimum word count - That was already coming and many top article marketers will not even be affected by the increased word count because they were already submitting articles over 400 words.

    They are also considering making all submitted content be unique to EZA and published nowehere else. Again, some article marketers have already been advocated using unique content with EZA so no harm here.

    They will be decreasing the amount of adsense ads on articles - LOVE IT!!!!

    I don't really see any change sthat will hurt a competant article marketer and actually look forward to embracing the changes and moving forward as they are implemented.

    It's about time that original quality content played a much larger role in an article marketers kit bag.

    Respectfully,
    Tim
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    • Profile picture of the author wayne60618
      Originally Posted by TimG View Post

      I read through what Chris and the EZA team plan to do in order to correct the problems/issues that caused them to lose some credability with Google and I salute them.

      All changes will weed out the folks that have gamed EZA and will significantly benefit the authors that have focused on providing quality content.

      Regarding the minimum word count - That was already coming and many top article marketers will not even be affected by the increased word count because they were already submitting articles over 400 words.

      They are also considering making all submitted content be unique to EZA and published nowehere else. Again, some article marketers have already been advocated using unique content with EZA so no harm here.

      They will be decreasing the amount of adsense ads on articles - LOVE IT!!!!

      I don't really see any change sthat will hurt a competant article marketer and actually look forward to embracing the changes and moving forward as they are implemented.

      It's about time that original quality content played a much larger role in an article marketers kit bag.

      Respectfully,
      Tim
      Hi Tim,

      Good comments, especially the part about removing some adsense. The one point of disagreement I would have is that I see no value in giving EZA exclusive content. They make money off the adsense and I supply the articles??? Not a good proposition, especially since there is no inherent reason why that article will rank higher at EZA than it would on another site in my niche.

      By the way, your Article Soldiers product looks good.

      Regards,

      Wayne
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      • Profile picture of the author TimG
        Originally Posted by wayne60618 View Post

        Hi Tim,

        Good comments, especially the part about removing some adsense. The one point of disagreement I would have is that I see no value in giving EZA exclusive content. They make money off the adsense and I supply the articles??? Not a good proposition, especially since there is no inherent reason why that article will rank higher at EZA than it would on another site in my niche.

        By the way, your Article Soldiers product looks good.

        Regards,

        Wayne
        Wayne,
        I agree that decision will not be very popular with lots of folks which is why EZA is evaluating it before deciding on whether or not to implement it.

        Personally, I've already been providing them unique content (even different from the content on my websites) so that change doesn't really phase me.

        Of course, it does make a person have to evaluate where to place their content because if EZA requires unique content but a better ROI can be gained on a blog as a guest writer then guess where the content should go.....they (EZA) will have to be careful with this idea because it could hurt them to some degree.

        I also dont think the no-follow is that big of a deal because if an article marketer does their job correctly then the traffic will follow. I never really submitted articles to EZA for backlinks but more for the exposure and traffic it generated.

        The one change I really want to see is the decrease in adsense ads because personally, I believe that was what led to their demise.

        When you start letting in lots of low quality articles and loading them up with adsense ads in order to generate quick and easy profits you are no better than a content farm so in a sense they became a huge content farm.

        Lowering the adsense ads and enforciing a strict quality control procedure will restore them back to their former levels but it may take some time.

        I think many of the top article marketers (Alexa, Bill Platt...etc) will not even be affected because they have always focused on quality content.

        When the smoke clears the markters that have been doing this successfully for several years will continue to do well.

        Respectfully,
        Tim
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  • Profile picture of the author The Niche Man
    EZA seems to be tightening the reins. That's the good news. The bad news is it may be opening itself to Facebook, I've heard their toying with the idea getting into the article directory business. Don't laugh, Google and MySpace laughed two years ago.

    Unfortunately, EZA is getting the Google-itis ... take it or leave it attitude with the people who made them rich and famous. I don't mind them tightening the reins, but don't choke out the people who made you famous in the first place.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Hill
      Originally Posted by The Niche Man View Post

      EZA seems to be tightening the reins. That's the good news. The bad news is it may be opening itself to Facebook, I've heard their toying with the idea getting into the article directory business. Don't laugh, Google and MySpace laughed two years ago.

      Unfortunately, EZA is getting the Google-itis ... take it or leave it attitude with the people who made them rich and famous. I don't mind them tightening the reins, but don't choke out the people who made you famous in the first place.
      Trouble is Ezine Articles is dependent on Google where as FaceBook is not. Ezine Articles did not become famous off of garbage articles and cleaning it up and making it harder to get content approved will only increase traffic in the long run, once people realize they have good a curate content they will start getting more traffic then ever before. It's all about reputation and it will only get better as the reigns are tightened.
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      • Profile picture of the author Tina Golden
        The only suggestion that I would have an issue with is requiring me to give them unpublished content. That I won't do as I can get more mileage out of unique content elsewhere.

        Other than that, anything that gets rid of the junk content is fine with me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rich Struck
    I'm glad Google made this change. I'm soooooo tired of finding crappy ezine articles when I'm looking for information.
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    • Profile picture of the author TZ
      Originally Posted by Rich Struck View Post

      I'm glad Google made this change. I'm soooooo tired of finding crappy ezine articles when I'm looking for information.
      No kidding.

      Hubpages too.
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  • Profile picture of the author darrin_kuykendall
    With no-follow, there is no value to a marketer who use creating articles to improve their ranking on their personal site. The only value that EzineArticles will provide to a marketer is lead generation. Given that they already shun personal "advertorials" or links directly to their site, this also reduces the value of lead generation.

    You could essentially create 100 unique quality articles and be lucky enough to generate traffic. That's all you will get.
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    • Profile picture of the author jbsmith
      I like how they instantly blame their article writers instead of possibly considering that Article directories in general (trying to cover every topic under the sun with a range of different writers) aren't really that useful to anyone!

      Maybe it is the CONCEPT of an article directory that Google is penalizing and not a fringe set of writers that Ezine Articles is blaming for their current predicament.

      Jeff
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      • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
        Originally Posted by jbsmith View Post

        I like how they instantly blame their article writers instead of possibly considering that Article directories in general (trying to cover every topic under the sun with a range of different writers) aren't really that useful to anyone!
        Nothing than GIANT "Made for AdSense sites".

        Really, it doesnt make sense to be angry at the little "made for adsense" site which is outranking me on Google...but at the same accepting that companies like EZA, Articlesbase etc. are basically doing the same thing, except on gigantic and multi-million dollar scales.

        Why should we support this?

        Did Google do something right, FOR A CHANGE? As much as i am horrified seeing those drops at EZA and AB....so i am glad that Google actually did something right this time as it seems. Admit it.
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      • Profile picture of the author edlewis
        Originally Posted by jbsmith View Post

        I like how they instantly blame their article writers instead of possibly considering that Article directories in general (trying to cover every topic under the sun with a range of different writers) aren't really that useful to anyone!

        Maybe it is the CONCEPT of an article directory that Google is penalizing and not a fringe set of writers that Ezine Articles is blaming for their current predicament.

        Jeff
        Great post...

        The more I read coming from Google, the more it appears that they believe these sites as a whole are nothing more than content farms. In their minds, this is NOT quality content.

        Now to some of the writers of these articles who worked hard on these articles, this may seem harsh...

        Some could even accuse Google of being content "elitists"...

        I'm far from an expert here, but I have a hunch these changes from EZA are "too little, too late".

        In the future, I think content will be syndicated in a different way.

        Someone needs to set up a network that connects site publishers with article writers....this way if I run a niche site on let's say "weightlifting" and I need content, I can find someone who has written QUALITY content on that topic and publish on my site - in exchange for a link back to the article writers site.

        The benefits would be greater for both site owners and article writers....in this model all that has really been cut out is the middle man, EZA....and, of course, the producers of crappy, thin, worthless "content" written only for search engine spiders.
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        • Profile picture of the author ExploringInfinity
          Ezine Articles went NO FOLLOW?

          Wellp, so much for posting there, because click throughs and traffic from their site SUCKS. I don't care what anyone says, I have 20 articles on there, and most of them are high quality and 600-800 words, and I have got about 50 clicks in a year and a bit.

          I can get 50 clicks from just about anywhere else.
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          • Profile picture of the author HigherPrThanGod
            After reading a bit more about this, I think this change by Google may have just destroyed article marketing. Think about it, this affects all article bins. I doubt they'll be around in a few years. At least not in the same way.

            None of these article sites, I.E. "content farms" carry the SEO weight they once did, so outside of the traffic you might get from them they're now no more valuable than, say, posting on Craigslist? Oh, wait, Craigslist sends more traffic. :p

            Maybe this is what Nostradamus was writing about the end of the world...
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            • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
              Originally Posted by HigherPrThanGod View Post

              After reading a bit more about this, I think this change by Google may have just destroyed article marketing. Think about it, this affects all article bins. I doubt they'll be around in a few years. At least not in the same way.

              None of these article sites, I.E. "content farms" carry the SEO weight they once did, so outside of the traffic you might get from them they're now no more valuable than, say, posting on Craigslist? Oh, wait, Craigslist sends more traffic. :p

              Maybe this is what Nostradamus was writing about the end of the world...
              UGH.

              Article marketing will always work. Press releases will always work.

              Not every single search result for EZA was effected. Yes, they were hit hard, but they aren't dead. And so what, they are one site! Start moving around, start marketing, don't keep your eggs in one basket and you'll be fine.
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              • Profile picture of the author HigherPrThanGod
                Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

                UGH.

                Article marketing will always work. Press releases will always work.

                Not every single search result for EZA was effected. Yes, they were hit hard, but they aren't dead. And so what, they are one site! Start moving around, start marketing, don't keep your eggs in one basket and you'll be fine.
                I don't do article marketing, thank God. I'm not trying to be the grim reaper.
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        • Profile picture of the author Defunct
          So they currently have bad rankings since the algo change.

          No rev share.

          No link juice.

          Might want 100% unique as in not on your site first content.

          So basically I put content up there that will be searched by people who go directly to EZA?

          BAD DEAL.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dahlia Valentine
    When I started ghostwriting last year I went through the backlinks of many PR5-8 authority websites across many different competitive niches. Specifically sites that rank in the top 3 in Google's SERPs.

    Ezinearticles isn't even a blip on the backlink screen for many of these sites. Article directories in general don't play a huge role in the success of many of the really competitive sites I've researched. (I use Majestic SEO for backlink research. It's pricey, but comprehensive.)

    This isn't a blanket statement. It's only a heads up.

    Google seems to like backlinks from other content sites besides article directories. That's why professional link builders like Eric Ward get paid a premium for their services. They get rank and traffic for their clients, and they don't depend on article directories.
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  • Profile picture of the author CatherineC
    Banned
    Excellent. Love the NoFollow, even love the exclusive content possibility. Get rid of the backlinkers, the brute-force outsourcers, etc.

    Time to write long, well-thought out articles that actually help people instead of the drivel that gets barfed up each day on that site.

    Thumbs up, I hope Chris has the strength to withstand all the crying from IMers about it.
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    • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
      Originally Posted by CatherineC View Post

      Excellent. Love the NoFollow, even love the exclusive content possibility. Get rid of the backlinkers, the brute-force outsourcers, etc.

      Time to write long, well-thought out articles that actually help people instead of the drivel that gets barfed up each day on that site.

      Thumbs up, I hope Chris has the strength to withstand all the crying from IMers about it.
      I actually agree with this. Unless you are ready to start writing content that is actually helpful, EZA is taking a major SEO weapon away by no-following links.

      I wonder how changes like these will affect the article marketing crowd.
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    • Profile picture of the author Terry Hatfield
      I quit reading Ezinearticles articles a very long time ago.

      They have so much adsense on their article pages it give me a headache to even read them. They are one big made for adsense site and deserve to be punished.
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    • Profile picture of the author moneycometh
      Originally Posted by CatherineC View Post

      Excellent. Love the NoFollow, even love the exclusive content possibility. Get rid of the backlinkers, the brute-force outsourcers, etc.

      Time to write long, well-thought out articles that actually help people instead of the drivel that gets barfed up each day on that site.

      Thumbs up, I hope Chris has the strength to withstand all the crying from IMers about it.
      Content is king. I should say great, quality, content. I've read this for a number of years. Now, I'm able to discern the better, better, and best content. It's amazing what time and long and arduous study will make of you. :rolleyes:
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  • Profile picture of the author iStealSushi
    Based on the many, many articles I've read from that site, quite frankly, I'm not surprised. More than half of the articles on that website is blatant marketing attempt with no real value content on the article itself. Any real expert from the field of whatever niche the writer is writing about can instantly pick apart genuine articles from bland crap that's clearly just on ezine for the backlinking boost.

    Sorry if that sounded harsh, but I write this from the customer's point of view. I've done my fair share of research as a customer and half the time, I end up going WTF at the articles I read on there.
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    • Profile picture of the author inter123
      These guys at Ezine Articles are a little idiotic. Why take action after the ship has half sunk, they should have forseen and done something 1 year+ ago. As a consolation, they did become fat by plastering their site with Adsense in the latter part of last year.
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      • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
        Originally Posted by inter123 View Post

        These guys at Ezine Articles are a little idiotic. Why take action after the ship has half sunk, they should have forseen and done something 1 year+ ago. As a consolation, they did become fat by plastering their site with Adsense in the latter part of last year.
        Damage Control.

        And of course panic because they will now face HUUUGE revenue losses.

        Keywords downranked -30 on avg....they could as well be de-indexed. Its over for them, EZA, articlesbase, whatever.
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  • Profile picture of the author Terry Hatfield
    I don't think they should get rid of the do follow links. If someone writes a good article and submits it to their directory then they deserve some link love.

    What they should do is just have their article reviewers do their jobs and reject the low quality junk and spam, not punish those who built their business.
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    • Profile picture of the author HigherPrThanGod
      Originally Posted by Terry Hatfield View Post

      I don't think they should get rid of the do follow links. If someone writes a good article and submits it to their directory then they deserve some link love.

      What they should do is just have their article reviewers do their jobs and reject the low quality junk and spam, not punish those who built their business.
      I think their site design is the low quality junk and spam, with google ads everywhere. Their articles were fine, if you could find the article text...lol
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    • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
      Originally Posted by Terry Hatfield View Post

      I don't think they should get rid of the do follow links. If someone writes a good article and submits it to their directory then they deserve some link love.

      Going no-follow will eliminate lots of poor-quality spam almost overnight.
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      • Profile picture of the author CatherineC
        Banned
        Originally Posted by wolfmmiii View Post

        Going no-follow will eliminate lots of poor-quality spam almost overnight.
        Bigtime.

        All they have to do to make this NOFOLLOW and exclusive content idea more palatable is to add rev-share on the articles that perform well.

        IMers would swallow just about any change if it included slicing us in on a piece of the adsense pie we generate for Chris and his employees.
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      • Profile picture of the author mills
        Originally Posted by wolfmmiii View Post

        Going no-follow will eliminate lots of poor-quality spam almost overnight.
        But what are they going to do with the large volume of junk already 'approved'..! I've seen lots of articles which not only say nothing of any use, have keyword stuffed titles, and have sentence strutures so bad I'm shocked the buyer even paid their outsourcers let alone uploaded them!
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      • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
        Banned
        Originally Posted by wolfmmiii View Post

        Going no-follow will eliminate lots of poor-quality spam almost overnight.
        It will also eliminate most every other submission as well.....well, except for the dumb dumbs. No one with half a clue is going to submit articles if they're going to be no follow....especially since the articles apparently aren't even going to rank like before.
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        • Profile picture of the author Kay King
          Take the 1000 (or so) major content "farm" sites and give them a -30 penalty.
          It's also a method that would be easy for google to adjust should the results be more or less drastic than desired, wouldn't it?

          One thing is for sure - it's going to be interesting for a while.

          kay
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Barker
    I am relatively new to Ezinearticles.com. What is changing exactly that would affect me moving forward?

    Thanks!
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    • Profile picture of the author TimG
      Originally Posted by Jeremy Barker View Post

      I am relatively new to Ezinearticles.com. What is changing exactly that would affect me moving forward?

      Thanks!
      If you are writing high quality content the changes are minor annoyances.

      If you were using EZA as a personal backlink provider and only submitting shallow 250 word articles then plenty of pain to be felt.

      In my opinion their changes will seperate the wheat from the chaff....just make sure you are the wheat.

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

        If you are writing high quality content the changes are minor annoyances.

        If you were using EZA as a personal backlink provider and only submitting shallow 250 word articles then plenty of pain to be felt.

        In my opinion their changes will seperate the wheat from the chaff....just make sure you are the wheat.

        Respectfully,
        Tim
        See, I don't understand. I don't do article marketing, but the entire reason for posting on Ezinearticles has just vanished, has it not? They won't provide the traffic they used too, and now you wont even get a backlink, so what am I missing?

        What on Earth does anyone gain from posting articles on there at this point?
        • Traffic? Not much.
        • Backlinks? No.
        • Quality place for someone to read your article? No.
        lol, what else is there?

        EDIT - It looks like Squidoo might have been skipped..
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        • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
          Originally Posted by HigherPrThanGod View Post

          • Traffic? No.
          • Backlinks? No.
          • Quality place for someone to read your article? No.
          lol, what else is there?

          EDIT - It looks like Squidoo might have been skipped..
          EZA will be great for traffic if they bounce back and if they remove a bunch of AdSense. Many of my articles currently see a 25%-35% CTR. I suspect that will go higher if they remove a bunch of AdSense.

          That said, I still prefer PPC over SEO.
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          • Profile picture of the author HigherPrThanGod
            Originally Posted by wolfmmiii View Post

            EZA will be great for traffic if they bounce back and if they remove a bunch of AdSense. Many of my articles currently see a 25%-35% CTR. I suspect that will go higher if they remove a bunch of AdSense.

            That said, I still prefer PPC over SEO.
            That's a big, if. And yes to PPC over SEO.
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        • Profile picture of the author TimG
          Originally Posted by HigherPrThanGod View Post

          See, I don't understand. I don't do article marketing, but the entire reason for posting on Ezinearticles has just vanished, has it not? They won't provide the traffic they used too, and now you wont even get a backlink, so what am I missing?

          What on Earth does anyone gain from posting articles on there at this point?
          • Traffic? Not much.
          • Backlinks? No.
          • Quality place for someone to read your article? No.
          lol, what else is there?

          EDIT - It looks like Squidoo might have been skipped..
          Right now there are thousands of authors that get no traffic from EZA with their published articles just as there are authors that do get traffic.

          Chris mentiones that traffic will be about half of what it was last month so why not be a part of the half that receives traffic.

          5 Years ago EZA was fantastic for generating traffic for the small group of authors that submitted articles to it. I think we will see lots of authors abandon them which will open the doors for those that stay and weather the storm.

          I'm not suggesting that other sites be ignored....especially if they offer a better ROI for a person's content but to simply dismiss EZA completely may be a bit premature.

          I look at them like the stock market....buy low, sell high....right now there is blood in the streets so I may just increase article submissions to them to take advantage of the future rebound I expect them to receive from Google.

          I still think it is way to early to tell just how bad this recent algorithm is.....for instance some spammy garbage sites/pages are ranking well right now due to the change and I am confident those sites will disappear once the algorithm corrects itself.

          Respectfully,
          Tim
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  • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
    I don't know about InfoBarrel either. According to Alexa, their traffic was down 27% yesterday:

    Infobarrel.com Site Info
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  • Profile picture of the author billnad
    I have posted over 300 articles on ezinearticles and had almost 400,000 views. The trouble is these articles do not clickthrough to my own content very well and the only reason that I write for ezinearticles is for the linkback.

    Once ezinearticles implements the nofollow it becomes worthless to me. I don't care if their quality is better or if they start banning spun content, until Google makes it clear that they will give credit to nofollow links I see no reason to submit any more articles there.

    As it is if I post the content to my own blogs I get the articles for affiliate or adsense, I get control over keyword density, my article gets published immediately. The only trouble is getting the traffic. I think just writing for Stumbleupon or Digg or Reddit would be good enough to get organic links that would work better for cash in my pocket anyway.
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  • Profile picture of the author O0o0O
    I'm personally happy with the changes EZA is making. Big G is cracking down on content spam, and that forces EZA to acknowledge the problems it's facing on its home front. Eventually, they'll have to implement tougher controls, and that will inevitably weed out the low quality articles. That leaves us quality writers at the top where our content can be found by those searching for it.
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    • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
      Originally Posted by O0o0O View Post

      I'm personally happy with the changes EZA is making. Big G is cracking down on content spam, and that forces EZA to acknowledge the problems it's facing on its home front. Eventually, they'll have to implement tougher controls, and that will inevitably weed out the low quality articles. That leaves us quality writers at the top where our content can be found by those searching for it.
      You are ASSUMING/FANTASIZING that "quality articles" will stay fix in their rankings on EZA and only crap articles are affected by the drop.

      I just checked some of my quality (!) articles on ezine via US proxies and see avg. changes -20 -25 on those articles which ranked #2 in Google a couple days ago.

      The change is a GLOBAL change which affects ALL ARTICLES and all those sites listed in that sistrix study.

      A penalty -20 -35 is equal to a putting them into a coffin and nailing it shut. No one in their right mind will use those sites anymore if the best you can get is a ranking on page #3 in Google. IT'S OVER.

      Now..let them also add "NoFollow"...which means there is not one single reason anymore to use ezine or whatever similar site.

      I personally still HOPE that the actual backlink value has not changed, eg. a backlink from such a site still has the same value as before. Because i used them mainly for link building, not so much for direct traffic from the articles/rankings.
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      • Profile picture of the author sportsfan54
        Wow! And now the resource box is also NO Follow now!!
        I think it sucks they making the resource box no-follow now.

        There are still plenty of other good directories to submit your articles that are do-follow and have a good page rank.
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      • Profile picture of the author TimG
        Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

        You are ASSUMING/FANTASIZING that "quality articles" will stay fix in their rankings on EZA and only crap articles are affected by the drop.

        I just checked some of my quality (!) articles on ezine via US proxies and see avg. changes -20 -25 on those articles which ranked #2 in Google a couple days ago.

        The change is a GLOBAL change which affects ALL ARTICLES and all those sites listed in that sistrix study.

        A penalty -20 -35 is equal to a putting them into a coffin and nailing it shut. No one in their right mind will use those sites anymore if the best you can get is a ranking on page #3 in Google. IT'S OVER.

        Now..let them also add "NoFollow"...which means there is not one single reason anymore to use ezine or whatever similar site.

        I personally still HOPE that the actual backlink value has not changed, eg. a backlink from such a site still has the same value as before. Because i used them mainly for link building, not so much for direct traffic from the articles/rankings.
        George,
        Love your postings because you are providing facts. Couple of quick questions if you don't mind:

        1 - Have you seen or experienced drops like this before?

        2 - Do you think it's possible that Google has started out stricter then they intend to be and will loosen the restrictions in a few weeks in order to allow high quality articles to resume their rankings or go higher?

        I definately agree with you that an article on page 3 does no one any good.

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

          George,
          Love your postings because you are providing facts. Couple of quick questions if you don't mind:

          1 - Have you seen or experienced drops like this before?

          2 - Do you think it's possible that Google has started out stricter then they intend to be and will loosen the restrictions in a few weeks in order to allow high quality articles to resume their rankings or go higher?

          I definately agree with you that an article on page 3 does no one any good.

          Respectfully,
          Tim
          Hello,


          1) no.

          2) I don't know, but i heard rumors that Google is dong overtime to fix whatever got broken with the new algorithm. But that's really only internet gossip

          I am sure they will always tweak/fix/develop further their algorithms, but we simply don't know how and what they will change.

          I do agree that a general -25 something drop is pretty significant, especially if it doesn't differ between bad content and good content.

          It cannot be THEIR goal to drop any content "simply because its on ezine/articlesbase"..this would mean ignoring the actual content and attribute a negative stigmata to a piece of content based solely on the place where its published. "Oh its on a content farm, so it must be bad" .
          Does NOT make a lot of sense to me, at all.
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          • Profile picture of the author inter123
            Whenever a disaster or any other course of action takes place, there is always somebody to profit from it. Perhaps this is an inappropriate example but in 2005, Asia was hit with a mother of all Tsunamis. It resulted in a lot of people suffering.

            There were charity organisations which prior to it were dying becuase of a lack of funds. All of a sudden, with an influx of funds from the rest of the world and with something for them to do, they became alive.

            In the same way different websites and other people will benefit from the demise of Ezine Articles and other content farms who will replace them in the SERPs.
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          • Profile picture of the author TimG
            Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

            Hello,


            1) no.

            2) I don't know, but i heard rumors that Google is dong overtime to fix whatever got broken with the new algorithm. But that's really only internet gossip

            I am sure they will always tweak/fix/develop further their algorithms, but we simply don't know how and what they will change.

            I do agree that a general -25 something drop is pretty significant, especially if it doesn't differ between bad content and good content.

            It cannot be THEIR goal to drop any content "simply because its on ezine/articlesbase"..this would mean ignoring the actual content and attribute a negative stigmata to a piece of content based solely on the place where its published. "Oh its on a content farm, so it must be bad" .
            Does NOT make a lot of sense to me, at all.
            Thank you for the comments - Looks like we are in agreement that the penalities are rather extreme at the moment.

            I think once it rolls out worldwide and then an evaluation is completed by Google we will see some return for many sites but others will be lost forever.

            I believe their intentions were good but dang if they didn't screw up the entire landscape hurting both good and bad content providers.

            Respectfully,
            Tim
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        • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
          Good points. If I have an article to share I could include it on my own website, or even on a free Wordpress.com blog?

          So why put it on EZA?

          1. A valuable dofollow backlink.

          2. Free traffic from the site based on an expectation the site is valued and will thus have better search ranking than putting it on Wordpress.com

          EZA has lost the 2nd benefit and is about to erase the 1st benefit.

          Note to self: there is an opportunity to fill the void due to EZA's mistakes.
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          • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
            Ironic thought:

            If you are 'no following' all links that implies:

            1. You are trying to game the SEO issue.

            2. You do not consider the links to have value.

            So why would Google reward you with a high ranking?
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            • Profile picture of the author 4morereferrals
              Originally Posted by kindsvater View Post

              Ironic thought:

              If you are 'no following' all links that implies:

              1. You are trying to game the SEO issue.

              2. You do not consider the links to have value.

              So why would Google reward you with a high ranking?

              Why did squidoo do it? and so many others?

              Google sends a little love note behind the scenes ...

              'Dear EZA,

              Your site is a cesspool of article spam and its destroying our serps. You can either rel=nofollow all these article resource boxes [ glorified outbound affiliate link ] STAT ... or we will yank all your PR ... close your adsense account ... shlapp you senseless .... deindex you etc ...'

              rel=nofollow is a significant deterrent to article link spammers ...

              EZA isnt doing this because they feel a conscience to provide quality content - google is holding their arse to the fire - else EZA would have cleaned up this mess moons ago.

              Why does google get in a tizzy DoFollow Aff Links on landing pages on OUR sites?

              Fun times
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          • Profile picture of the author TimG
            Originally Posted by kindsvater View Post

            Good points. If I have an article to share I could include it on my own website, or even on a free Wordpress.com blog?

            So why put it on EZA?

            1. A valuable dofollow backlink.

            2. Free traffic from the site based on an expectation the site is valued and will thus have better search ranking than putting it on Wordpress.com

            EZA has lost the 2nd benefit and is about to erase the 1st benefit.

            Note to self: there is an opportunity to fill the void due to EZA's mistakes.
            Brian,
            There will still be webmasters that use EZA to find content for publication purposes. That still makes them valuable.

            Additionally, if they still pull in 30 million unique visitors a month I want a peice of it and I expect that fewer authors will be competing for that traffic because many will give up due to the recent algorithm change.

            Respectfully,
            Tim
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            • Profile picture of the author Terry Hatfield
              Honestly, I wouldn't put any content from ezinearticles on my site now that Google has labeled it a content farm.
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            • Profile picture of the author daisy172
              4morereferrals - Squidoo do-follows links as long as you have an intro and three modules (and note they haven't really been hit by this algo change). Hubpage do-follows you as long as your author hubscore is over 75.

              Ezine are acting in bad faith by no-following links. They lured people to write for them, free of charge, with no revenue share, in return for a link, and are now reneging on their side of the bargain.

              If they think this will actually help them to regain SERPs positions, they need to think again.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post


        Now..let them also add "NoFollow"...which means there is not one single reason anymore to use ezine or whatever similar site.
        I'm with you on this. I can't see writing hundreds of articles just for click throughs on pages that are no longer going to rank for search engine traffic. I think people are trying to kid themselves.

        If ezine articles is getting less traffic as they are reporting then there is NO WAY it does not affect marketing from that site. The no follow means that I get no other boost from writing articles for them. Just like you said.

        Edit - good find TimG just saw they reversed that decision on nofollow. Thats would have been the kiss of death. Now we will have to see if the algo doesn't weaken the link from them regardless of being followed as they have with link farms.
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  • Profile picture of the author SGForce
    It will also weed out the pretenders and make IM more challanging which is a good thing.
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  • Profile picture of the author J Bold
    It's a pretty big, big hit on ezinearticles, though, whatever the case.

    Can anyone honestly say they've been happy when searching for something online and coming upon an ezinearticles article? Satisfied and found what you were looking for online? For me, I would say no, very seldom if in personal searching I came upon ezinearticles I ended up with a good resource or the information I really needed.
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    • Profile picture of the author Fred1
      Originally Posted by redicelander View Post

      It's a pretty big, big hit on ezinearticles, though, whatever the case.

      Can anyone honestly say they've been happy when searching for something online and coming upon an ezinearticles article? Satisfied and found what you were looking for online? For me, I would say no, very seldom if in personal searching I came upon ezinearticles I ended up with a good resource or the information I really needed.
      Good point.

      When doing personal searching, I generally overlook their articles because I honestly haven't seen one with enough meat to the article to be of benefit.

      This is just my experience! I'm sure there are quality articles/content there, but I've personally never encountered any.
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      • Profile picture of the author IM Ash
        Ezines only have themselves to blame: they established their directory to win the trust of Google and thereafter they let the quality slip. Inferior articles didn't just appear on their site, it was allowed to appear.

        Now they suddenly want to affect drastic changes to increase the quality of their content again by introducing one-sided rules that only benefit them. PLEASE... give me a break! The change needs to begin on the inside!

        But alas, methinks it is a little to late!
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  • Profile picture of the author IMFan
    I'm really surprised by the nofollow author resource box and traffic going way down... Will EZA survive the change?
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  • Profile picture of the author diyacorp
    Thanks for the great information here. I believe EZ was primarily being used for the follow link it provided earlier. Whenever I was looking for a information, EZ was anyway not the source I ever trusted. However, with this, what is the next option after EZ no longer offers the value ?
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  • Profile picture of the author brit16
    New to IM and "ranking"; is this why my article went from #3 on page 1 to being on page 5? Just noticed a couple days ago. The article is on articlesbase.
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  • Profile picture of the author Blake King
    This is good to know. I was actually planning on starting an article site sometime in the future. Now, not so much.

    Google is just as much a pain in SEO as it is in Adwords.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dave Rodman
    Banned
    I don't call many things "Dead", but I will say that I think Article Marketing is one of those areas that just got delivered a well deserved death blow. And if you rely on article marketing to a great extent, then things might be rough for you.

    I saw an article in the Chicago Tribune today about this issue. They talked about a guy that researched a medical problem and got served a bunch of articles from content farms. Now the same search will give you more credible medical resources.

    From google's standpoint, they probably know that 99% of the articles in EZA are crap. And even though they throw away the 1% of the articles that might be moderately useful, they probably also realize that nobody will miss them.

    If you write really good articles, then I'm sorry. But honestly most people don't write good articles, even when they say they do.
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    • Profile picture of the author TimG
      Originally Posted by Dave Rodman View Post

      I don't call many things "Dead", but I will say that I think Article Marketing is one of those areas that just got delivered a well deserved death blow. And if you rely on article marketing to a great extent, then things might be rough for you.

      I saw an article in the Chicago Tribune today about this issue. They talked about a guy that researched a medical problem and got served a bunch of articles from content farms. Now the same search will give you more credible medical resources.

      From google's standpoint, they probably know that 99% of the articles in EZA are crap. And even though they throw away the 1% of the articles that might be moderately useful, they probably also realize that nobody will miss them.

      If you write really good articles, then I'm sorry. But honestly most people don't write good articles, even when they say they do.
      I doubt this is the death of article marketing because there are still plenty of places (sites) that need high quality articles and will pay for high quality content.

      If anything it migth be the death of article directories and even than that might be a bit of a stretch and premature to say. I think junk article directories are history but expect a directory like EZA to recover to some extent.

      Let's be honest EZA generated 57 million unique visitors last month - That's a lot of adsense/adwords income generated by them for Google - I can't believe that Google will just let them die.

      If you can generate that many visitors in a month I would think you can have some ability to communicate with Google staff to fix your problems.....so, I expect more to follow.

      One thing is for sure, you are dead on correct when you say that a majority of folks don't write good articles....that's been the problem for the entire online marketing community.

      Respectfully,
      Tim
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    In their minds, this is NOT quality content.
    On a certain level you need to admit this is true - BUT, its also wrong that Google applies a global penalty to each single piece of content "just because it's on ezine articles". Something is not right here. I just commented this over at the ezine blog, i said applying a global penalty to all articles is at least as dumb as ranking any random "**** berry" or whatever article exceptionally well "simply because it is on ezine".

    Is there no golden compromise in between?
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  • Profile picture of the author J Bold
    Just been reading a lot on another forum. It's a pretty big algo change for a lot of sites, not just ezinearticles.

    And I don't see, again, how this is a death blow to article marketing. It just might be a death blow of sorts to article marketing on ezinearticles. But there are going to be other kinds of 3rd party sites that still have their rankings intact that you could use for similar strategies. You just have to be creative and go with what's working at the time.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    Nofollow attribute being added, I think EZA will integrate a premium feature allowing paid users to include a non nofollow link. They will be fine, a 50 percent cut on traffic would be what, 25-30 million visitors a month still? They'll be just fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Glad I never fell for Ole' EZA type article sites.

    You guys that promote other sites with your articles will learn sooner or later, you should build your own niche network rather than support a site milking your articles for every penny they can get!

    Lets see here, rank my own site or some other guys site?

    Good luck with that!
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  • Profile picture of the author cma01
    Regarding the raising word count minimum, it's not really a big deal.

    As the for exclusive content, EA is just one place I distribute content and if they required it be exclusive to them, I would check them off my list. I submit for exposure and backlinks (ooh . . . so evil I know.)

    My focus is building MY sites. The best and exclusive content goes there. I'm not going to spend my time creating unique content to help build up EA for flipping bragging rights and a mug every once in awhile.

    So they give you "expert author" status. They are an article directory, not the NYT. I hate to break it to you, but I don't care how many articles you have published there . . . outside of IM, it's really not something to put on your writer's resume.

    Their business has been primarily built on providing a platform for internet marketers to promote their own sites and has been a mutually symbiotic relationship. They need to recognize that and keep that in mind when they are making reactionary changes.
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  • Profile picture of the author calfred
    Wow. EzineArticles is going to make all resource box links no-follow now?

    That'll be interesting to see whether the rankings for my sites drop or not.
    We'll find out whether no-follow links are really all that hype or not.

    Almost 80% of my backlinks are from EZA.

    Will report back to you guys in a week or 2.
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  • Profile picture of the author tpw
    EZA is taking a knee-jerk reaction to this change.

    Let's consider NoFollow links for example. ArticlesBase has had NoFollow links for years, and they were hit as hard as EZA was hit.

    The reaction they are making to this in my mind shows that Chris is a little out-of-touch with his own marketplace.

    The problem is not Follow Links or original content or any of the other solutions he is offering. The problem is quality content.

    When consumers go to Google, they want to find solutions to their problems, NOT a badly spun article that strikes all of the target keywords. They want and need solutions for their problems.

    Let's look at EZA. With more than 5 million articles submitted to their system, I am willing to be better than 60% of their content is junk -- plain and simple.

    Consumers do not want Google showing them junk content in response to their questions.

    The only way EZA is going to survive this is to spend the money now to clean the garbage out of their system, pure and simple.

    And of course, that will piss off a lot of the people, who as another poster said "made them famous".

    If they want to do a more thorough job of bringing up the quality of their content, they must invest NOW in bringing up the quality of content. They should give their users the ability to VOTE OUT junk, keeping in mind that competitors will vote against their competition.

    So instead of letting a single Down Vote kill an article, those down votes will require an editor to review the article for quality. If the article looks good, then the editor over-rides voters. Anything manually approved by the editorial team to stay in cannot be voted out and the vote button will disappear from that article.

    But if a quality control editor agrees that the article is junk, then the editor has full nuking capabilities for that article.

    That is the answer to EZA woes. The question is, will they spend the resources to save their ass, by cleaning out the junk and improving the quality of content inside their directory?

    Given the knee-jerk reaction today, I am afraid that they do not know why they got crushed, and therefore, they are unable to see a valid solution to their problem.

    Many of the changes proposed today amount to nothing more than stabs in the dark, which tells me that Chris isn't thinking this through.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kurt
      Originally Posted by tpw View Post

      EZA is taking a knee-jerk reaction to this change.

      Let's consider NoFollow links for example. ArticlesBase has had NoFollow links for years, and they were hit as hard as EZA was hit.

      The reaction they are making to this in my mind shows that Chris is a little out-of-touch with his own marketplace.

      The problem is not Follow Links or original content or any of the other solutions he is offering. The problem is quality content.

      When consumers go to Google, they want to find solutions to their problems, NOT a badly spun article that strikes all of the target keywords. They want and need solutions for their problems.

      Let's look at EZA. With more than 5 million articles submitted to their system, I am willing to be better than 60% of their content is junk -- plain and simple.

      Consumers do not want Google showing them junk content in response to their questions.

      The only way EZA is going to survive this is to spend the money now to clean the garbage out of their system, pure and simple.

      And of course, that will piss off a lot of the people, who as another poster said "made them famous".

      If they want to do a more thorough job of bringing up the quality of their content, they must invest NOW in bringing up the quality of content. They should give their users the ability to VOTE OUT junk, keeping in mind that competitors will vote against their competition.

      So instead of letting a single Down Vote kill an article, those down votes will require an editor to review the article for quality. If the article looks good, then the editor over-rides voters. Anything manually approved by the editorial team to stay in cannot be voted out and the vote button will disappear from that article.

      But if a quality control editor agrees that the article is junk, then the editor has full nuking capabilities for that article.

      That is the answer to EZA woes. The question is, will they spend the resources to save their ass, by cleaning out the junk and improving the quality of content inside their directory?

      Given the knee-jerk reaction today, I am afraid that they do not know why they got crushed, and therefore, they are unable to see a valid solution to their problem.

      Many of the changes proposed today amount to nothing more than stabs in the dark, which tells me that Chris isn't thinking this through.
      Actually, the problem for marketers is how did/does Google detect "quality" content? This is the real issue at hand. And I'm not convinced it's just an issue of quality. It could be quality and originality, for example.

      Also, the solution for EZA is whether this is an algorithmic or a "man made" action by Google.

      If it's the algo, then EZA should just be able to make the changes and Google's SERPs will adjust accordingly.

      If it's man-made, EZA will have to make changes, the reapply to Google for a review. It's possible Google took a list of 1000 article-type sites and just added something like a "-30" type penalty to each of them.
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      • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
        Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

        Actually, the problem for marketers is how did/does Google detect "quality" content? This is the real issue at hand. And I'm not convinced it's just an issue of quality. It could be quality and originality, for example.

        Also, the solution for EZA is whether this is an algorithmic or a "man made" action by Google.

        If it's the algo, then EZA should just be able to make the changes and Google's SERPs will adjust accordingly.

        If it's man-made, EZA will have to make changes, the reapply to Google for a review. It's possible Google took a list of 1000 article-type sites and just added something like a "-30" type penalty to each of them.
        I think it's both. Ultimately it is humans and not a computer that determines what a "quality" search list should look like.

        Computer algorithms are then made to create that vision.

        So if you don't want to see article directories at the top, and you don't want to manually penalize each one (and new ones are always being created), you work on an algorithm that will target those sites without also affecting more "valued" sites.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

        Also, the solution for EZA is whether this is an algorithmic or a "man made" action by Google.

        If it's the algo, then EZA should just be able to make the changes and Google's SERPs will adjust accordingly.
        That is the question but at this point it does seem to be an algo change but I am not sure it can easily be corrected.

        A) thats a whole lot of content to remove/change.
        B) The algo may not be directly punitive.

        On B everyone assumes that the algo targeted certain content negatively. It might not have. It might just have promoted other content positively. Same effect but until you know why and how the other content is being promoted its not as easy to correct quickly.
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      • Profile picture of the author tpw
        Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

        Actually, the problem for marketers is how did/does Google detect "quality" content? This is the real issue at hand. And I'm not convinced it's just an issue of quality. It could be quality and originality, for example.

        Also, the solution for EZA is whether this is an algorithmic or a "man made" action by Google.

        If it's the algo, then EZA should just be able to make the changes and Google's SERPs will adjust accordingly.

        If it's man-made, EZA will have to make changes, the reapply to Google for a review. It's possible Google took a list of 1000 article-type sites and just added something like a "-30" type penalty to each of them.

        From what I read, I suspect it was an algorithm change.

        I don't think it is originality, because my site has 7000 syndicated articles on it, and I am up with this update. Because I charge $35 for article syndication, that by itself has kept most of the junk out of my directory.

        As I am sure you are, I am looking for common denominators.

        NoFollow was not the answer, or ArticlesBase would have been spared.

        Someone else said that HubPages works on the model I described. I have never even looked at HubPages, so I have to take their word for that.

        I honestly don't believe that Google is capable of checking by algorithm the quality of an article.

        I strongly suspect that Google built the algorithm to look at "social validation" of the content. Are people reprinting the content on authority websites? Are people linking to the article? Are people talking about the article in social media? Are other people "retweeting" the article? Are the people talking about the article "thought leaders", with more people following them than they follow?

        I think this is valid, because authority websites only reprint articles that they feel would have value to their users. Social media is usually driven primarily by quality as well. Sure, we can rig some social media, but we are typically limited by the depth that we can acquire through social media.

        If you look at the Sistrix data (Google Farmer Update: Quest for Quality - SEO-Blog), you will note that while all of the directories seem to have taken huge hits, they have not been completely decimated. That tells me that there remain some articles in those sites that still have value in the Google algorithm, so that negates a sitewide -30. On one particular keyword that my site gets lots of traffic, I am now #3, right behind EZA at #2.

        I will be looking for more common denominators over the coming weeks and months. But for now, "social validation" of quality content seems to me to be the most likely answer.

        I could be wrong, but for now, this is where I am thinking the answer might reside.
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        • Profile picture of the author TimG
          Originally Posted by tpw View Post

          From what I read, I suspect it was an algorithm change.

          I don't think it is originality, because my site has 7000 syndicated articles on it, and I am up with this update. Because I charge $35 for article syndication, that by itself has kept most of the junk out of my directory.

          As I am sure you are, I am looking for common denominators.

          NoFollow was not the answer, or ArticlesBase would have been spared.

          Someone else said that HubPages works on the model I described. I have never even looked at HubPages, so I have to take their word for that.

          I honestly don't believe that Google is capable of checking by algorithm the quality of an article.

          I strongly suspect that Google built the algorithm to look at "social validation" of the content. Are people reprinting the content on authority websites? Are people linking to the article? Are people talking about the article in social media? Are other people "retweeting" the article? Are the people talking about the article "thought leaders", with more people following them than they follow?

          I think this is valid, because authority websites only reprint articles that they feel would have value to their users. Social media is usually driven primarily by quality as well. Sure, we can rig some social media, but we are typically limited by the depth that we can acquire through social media.

          If you look at the Sistrix data (Google Farmer Update: Quest for Quality - SEO-Blog), you will note that while all of the directories seem to have taken huge hits, they have not been completely decimated. That tells me that there remain some articles in those sites that still have value in the Google algorithm, so that negates a sitewide -30. On one particular keyword that my site gets lots of traffic, I am now #3, right behind EZA at #2.

          I will be looking for more common denominators over the coming weeks and months. But for now, "social validation" of quality content seems to me to be the most likely answer.

          I could be wrong, but for now, this is where I am thinking the answer might reside.
          Bill,
          Good rundown on what you are seeing.....appreciate your knowledge on this issue. There are a few experts I will be following to see what they are experiencing in terms of the recent changes and you will be one of those experts.

          Like the "social validation" control measure and definately think there is some merit behind them. I think a site's stickiness factor is a big factor right now.

          If folks are bouncing from a site as quick as they arrive they are basically telling Google this site is not relevant to the keyword phrase they searched for.

          Might be a good time to add some interactive features to our content in order to keep the visitor/reader interested in the page.

          Respectfully,
          Tim
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        • Profile picture of the author Kurt
          Originally Posted by tpw View Post

          From what I read, I suspect it was an algorithm change.

          I don't think it is originality, because my site has 7000 syndicated articles on it, and I am up with this update. Because I charge $35 for article syndication, that by itself has kept most of the junk out of my directory.

          As I am sure you are, I am looking for common denominators.

          NoFollow was not the answer, or ArticlesBase would have been spared.

          Someone else said that HubPages works on the model I described. I have never even looked at HubPages, so I have to take their word for that.

          I honestly don't believe that Google is capable of checking by algorithm the quality of an article.

          I strongly suspect that Google built the algorithm to look at "social validation" of the content. Are people reprinting the content on authority websites? Are people linking to the article? Are people talking about the article in social media? Are other people "retweeting" the article? Are the people talking about the article "thought leaders", with more people following them than they follow?

          I think this is valid, because authority websites only reprint articles that they feel would have value to their users. Social media is usually driven primarily by quality as well. Sure, we can rig some social media, but we are typically limited by the depth that we can acquire through social media.

          If you look at the Sistrix data (Google Farmer Update: Quest for Quality - SEO-Blog), you will note that while all of the directories seem to have taken huge hits, they have not been completely decimated. That tells me that there remain some articles in those sites that still have value in the Google algorithm, so that negates a sitewide -30. On one particular keyword that my site gets lots of traffic, I am now #3, right behind EZA at #2.

          I will be looking for more common denominators over the coming weeks and months. But for now, "social validation" of quality content seems to me to be the most likely answer.

          I could be wrong, but for now, this is where I am thinking the answer might reside.
          When trying to reverse engineer Google I prefer to start with the easiest solution for Google, and work backwards from there.

          What's the easiest thing for Google to do:

          Take the 1000 (or so) major content "farm" sites and give them a -30 penalty.

          The logic for this could be something like:

          if page is on eza.com, give a -30 UNLESS ______

          The "unless" could be a number of factors, such as quality of external links, if article is tweeted, syndicated on a white-listed blog, etc.

          It could also be a simple "correction" as opposed to a "penalty". Perhaps these sites were white-listed by hand years ago, giving the domains more authority. Then recently Google removed the white-listing so now EZA and the others are ranked just like any other site, without any added advantage due to being white-listed.

          These are the two simplest, most basic possibilities.

          In addition to social factors, Google could be taking the next step which I called "People Rank" years ago and adding more and more real human measurements to its rankings.

          Using the Googlebar, Google can easily tell:
          - Percentage of click throughs in the SERPs (no bar needed for this)

          - Time on page

          - Click depth - Did user click back to SERPs (and how long?) or did user spend time on page, then click through to other links on domain?

          - Scroll depth - How far down the page did the user scroll?

          - Scroll speed - Did the use scroll quickly, scanning the page, or did they scroll at "reading speed"?

          - Bookmarked - Was the page bookmarked by the user? Was the page reached via bookmark? What percentage of users bookmarked the page? This would be a good indication of quality.

          - URL typed directly into browser. Another indication a person "likes" a page.

          Using the Googlebar is pretty hard to game, as I'm sure each has a unique tracking number, so proxies and clearing cache with have no affect.

          And all the above "People Rank" factors do more to determine "quality" than linking does, IMO. In today's SEO climate, links are more an indication of who pushed the Rummrunner button once and who pushed it twice, more than which site/page is really better.

          Add things like grammar and spelling, and PeopleRank to the social factors, add in On Page for relevancy and use linking in a more limited way, and we have a pretty good way to get relevant and quality results.
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          • Profile picture of the author tpw
            Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

            Using the Googlebar is pretty hard to game, as I'm sure each has a unique tracking number, so proxies and clearing cache with have no affect.

            And all the above "People Rank" factors do more to determine "quality" than linking does, IMO. In today's SEO climate, links are more an indication of who pushed the Rummrunner button once and who pushed it twice, more than which site/page is really better.

            Add things like grammar and spelling, and PeopleRank to the social factors, add in On Page for relevancy and use linking in a more limited way, and we have a pretty good way to get relevant and quality results.

            Kurt: I am agreeing with most of what you say.

            The delisting of a white-listed site is interesting, but the effects seem more far-reaching than a manual change would make.

            On the Google Bar that is interesting too, but do we have any idea how many consumers use that thing? I know that most marketers use it daily. But for general consumers, how much of the market uses that tool?

            If the Google Bar has a wide-reach, then I would think that a valid assumption. If its reach is south of 60% of Google users in the consumer market, I would think that the data-gathering is not wide enough to be trustworthy.

            Double-Click on the other hand is now a Google property. I think Double-Click gives them a much wider reach than even the toolbar could in their data collecting arsenal, but I could be wrong again.

            If they have a reliable method of seeing time on page, that in my mind should be a clear signal for the quality of the content. Further, hitting the back button and returning to Google is another metric that will clearly say where the value is at that people are looking to find.

            Certainly links can be manipulated, and to a smaller extent, social media can be manipulated. Getting syndicated on authority websites is the hardest part to manipulate.

            It is going to be interesting to see what all we can uncover here. For me, this is the most interesting algo change in years, and I will be paying close attention to what is learned.
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            • Profile picture of the author Kurt
              Originally Posted by tpw View Post

              Kurt: I am agreeing with most of what you say.

              The delisting of a white-listed site is interesting, but the effects seem more far-reaching than a manual change would make.

              On the Google Bar that is interesting too, but do we have any idea how many consumers use that thing? I know that most marketers use it daily. But for general consumers, how much of the market uses that tool?

              If the Google Bar has a wide-reach, then I would think that a valid assumption. If its reach is south of 60% of Google users in the consumer market, I would think that the data-gathering is not wide enough to be trustworthy.

              Double-Click on the other hand is now a Google property. I think Double-Click gives them a much wider reach than even the toolbar could in their data collecting arsenal, but I could be wrong again.

              If they have a reliable method of seeing time on page, that in my mind should be a clear signal for the quality of the content. Further, hitting the back button and returning to Google is another metric that will clearly say where the value is at that people are looking to find.

              Certainly links can be manipulated, and to a smaller extent, social media can be manipulated. Getting syndicated on authority websites is the hardest part to manipulate.

              It is going to be interesting to see what all we can uncover here. For me, this is the most interesting algo change in years, and I will be paying close attention to what is learned.
              On the white-listing point, if EZA had it's white-listing removed, this could affect all sites EZA links out to. And it isn't just limited to EZA...Toss in the other 1000 (example only) sites, such as Hubpages, etc, and every link wheel that uses any of the "1000" sites would/could also be affected.

              As far as Googlebar reach, I disagree that it would have to be over 60% to be effective. 5% would probably work. Toss in Doubleclick, Chrome, Google Analytics, Adwords/Adsense and Google has plenty of reach IMO to incorporate these stats into the SERPs. The Googlebar could be used to verify other stats, as the Googlebar is hard to game.
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    • Profile picture of the author inter123
      In a lot of businesses, people at the top have little clue as to what is happening at the bottom. Internet Marketers all know the problem faced by Ezine Articles, something which Chris and his execs are non too aware of.

      Originally Posted by tpw View Post

      The reaction they are making to this in my mind shows that Chris is a little out-of-touch with his own marketplace.....Many of the changes proposed today amount to nothing more than stabs in the dark, which tells me that Chris isn't thinking this through.
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    • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
      Originally Posted by tpw View Post

      So instead of letting a single Down Vote kill an article, those down votes will require an editor to review the article for quality. If the article looks good, then the editor over-rides voters. Anything manually approved by the editorial team to stay in cannot be voted out and the vote button will disappear from that article.

      But if a quality control editor agrees that the article is junk, then the editor has full nuking capabilities for that article.

      That is the answer to EZA woes. The question is, will they spend the resources to save their ass, by cleaning out the junk and improving the quality of content inside their directory?
      Hubpages already uses this model and they were crushed as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author seankaye
    I guess you need to be publicly listed like Demand Media to run a content farm or maybe AOL can buy you like HuffPo and then Google will leave you alone.
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  • Profile picture of the author gameutopia
    I never liked ezine or any other article directories nor did I ever see much of a bump from any article directory. I have seen some get a temporary boost, but didn't last long. Hope it works out for you all that do use it though yet.
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  • Profile picture of the author t3ch
    I think no move on the nofollow link. They wont do that at the moment
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  • Profile picture of the author bhuff85
    And this is just one of the many reasons why I NEVER built backlinks to an article at a place like EZA. All of those people who were slamming backlinks to articles have to be kicking themselves now.

    I use EZA primarily for traffic and lead generation and nothing more. The backlinks I never cared much for, just because their link weight isn't very "powerful" so to speak. Nonetheless, it's still a backlink, but getting a targeted visitor to me through my site is more important.
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  • Profile picture of the author kvnkane
    i use Ezine for traffic and backlinks, not really sure if this is going to effect me but i will be dissapointed if i lose my place in the serps because of this. seems like Ezine has turned their backs on the writers who have made their site as big as it is today. all of my content i have wrote for them has been unique but now that the links pointing to my site are no follow it seams like a waste of my time.

    they have profited off my articles and now their saying thanks but we are going to make your links useless.
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  • Profile picture of the author TimG
    For those that were concerned EZA will not be making the links in the author's resource box "NoFollow" links. Chris has decided to keep the links in the author's resource box "DoFollow".

    That was announced on their blog this morning in the comments section to his post yesterday.

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

      For those that were concerned EZA will not be making the links in the author's resource box "NoFollow" links. Chris has decided to keep the links in the author's resource box "DoFollow".

      That was announced on their blog this morning in the comments section to his post yesterday.

      Respectfully,
      Tim
      If they changed to NoFollow, I would of probably not of used them again. So, that is good news to all of us.
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      • Profile picture of the author Kay King
        I think it's too early to provide any sweeping conclusions. We've seen google modify changes in the past when the results of a change was greater than expected or when it affected one sector heavily and left another intact (autoblogs/scrapers?).

        At the same time, this is so new that the dust hasn't settled yet. A month from now the results may not be what they are today. EZA is being reactive - but that's the only path open right now. I'm glad to see Chris working on the problem but hope he'll hold off significant changes in policy until we know more about what google is really doing.

        The gradual changes at EZA over the past 2-3 years have drastically increased the ads and links on each page. The result is a change from the article being the FEATURE of the page to the ads being the most visible feature. Improving the layout of pages, decreasing the blanket of ads and requiring higher article quality are changes that would benefit EZA no matter what google does after this.

        kay
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  • Profile picture of the author gearmonkey
    My author's bio is still do-follow at this moment.

    But my blog has taken a huge hit. I noticed that message forums have taken a rise since this update.
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  • Profile picture of the author gearmonkey
    I think the best solution for EZA is to up their quality control. Tighter quality control = better content published.
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    • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
      There are plenty of article directories offering 'do follow' links.

      What has set EZA apart from the masses is its ability to get search rankings for those articles. The benefits are (1) free traffic and (2) presumably better link juice from a better ranking site.

      But with a major penalty EZA's traffic goes from 57 million per month to virtually nothing.

      The more I think about this the more I think EZA is dead. Certainly no reason to give it exclusive content.

      All the article directories are dead in search. What is thriving?

      - 'Expert' qualified content from about.com
      - 'Group expert' qualified content from wikipedia.
      - Content that at least tries to answer and solve a particular problem at ehow.

      Note that none of the above have a primary purpose of sending traffic to another site.

      Right now EZA is offering way too much generic garbage on Chicago Cell Phone Reverse Lookup whose goal is to get a click to another site with dubious content Google does not value.
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      • Profile picture of the author TimG
        Originally Posted by kindsvater View Post

        There are plenty of article directories offering 'do follow' links.

        What has set EZA apart from the masses is its ability to get search rankings for those articles. The benefits are (1) free traffic and (2) presumably better link juice from a better ranking site.

        But with a major penalty EZA's traffic goes from 57 million per month to virtually nothing.

        The more I think about this the more I think EZA is dead. Certainly no reason to give it exclusive content.

        All the article directories are dead in search. What is thriving?

        - 'Expert' qualified content from about.com
        - 'Group expert' qualified content from wikipedia.
        - Content that at least tries to answer and solve a particular problem at ehow.

        Note that none of the above have a primary purpose of sending traffic to another site.

        Right now EZA is offering way too much generic garbage on Chicago Cell Phone Reverse Lookup whose goal is to get a click to another site with dubious content Google does not value.
        Brian,
        I think Chris was estimating that EZA's traffic would drop to about 25 million uniques per month following this change - That is still a lot of potential visitors for folks to win over with quality content.

        Right now for a majority of the searches I am conducting with Google I'm getting garbage results....I believe they jacked their own search engine up and expect that some tweaks are forthcoming which should result in some rankings returning.

        We should no more by next week or perhaps in two weeks.

        Your are right about the garbage reverse cell phone lookup articles. I believe Chris said they were going to clean house on those types of articles and other articles that clearly offer no value to anyone.

        Respectfully,
        Tim
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  • Profile picture of the author ELK
    Seems like this could be a renaissance for the article syndication marketing model.

    Bag of popcorn - check!
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    Originally Posted by gujjuboy View Post

    They should also not allow any affiliate link redirect through domain in the resource box link. They should also check the website to which the article is linking is not spammy
    You see the hypocrisy?

    Google themselves are the BIGGEST content scrapers and farmers..making zillions of dollars by using their OWN search engine as an advertising platform.

    However *other* sites (like the "bad" ezine) should please refrain from using ads and affiliate links?

    In other words: Dont try to make money on the net..only Google is allowed to do this! <-- lol
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    • Profile picture of the author TimG
      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      You see the hypocrisy?

      Google themselves are the BIGGEST content scrapers and farmers..making zillions of dollars by using their OWN search engine as an advertising platform.

      However *other* sites (like the "bad" ezine) should please refrain from using ads and affiliate links?

      In other words: Dont try to make money on the net..only Google is allowed to do this! <-- lol
      George,
      That's one of my biggest concerns......Google forcing folks to using PPC in order to generate traffic based on these new changes.

      Respectfully,
      Tim
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  • Profile picture of the author thebitbotdotcom
    Well, if EZA stops accepting duplicate content (like the duplicate content I have been syndicating with them since the beginning) and they insist on originality, then between my blog/article directory and EZA, guess who gets the content...not EZA, that's for &^$% sure.
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  • Profile picture of the author JunkYour925
    wow - this change worked wonders for me. Most of my "competitors" with whom I shared spots in the top 100 are gone. Just checked my articles in Market Sam for my keywrds across hubpages, ezine etc. and not only are mine still there with some pertubations in rank# but practically all the other guys are gone. Out of 30 results in the top 100 24 are mine. Gotta love it.

    It pays to have quality articles written. Period.

    Next!
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  • Profile picture of the author Roberto L
    Honnestly speaking, EzineArticles had the most strict rules I had even seen, too much requirment before admit your articles. Time consumptive thing! And none of my rubbish articles approved by them.
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