ALERT: Google's New Attack On "Overly Optimized Sites"

Natural language technologies? What does that have anything to do with this? I don't think any robot will ever be able to turn out quality, valuable content like a real human writer can.

Sorry, but your value proposition is not very clear nor succint. The amount of human intervention it takes to take machine generated content and make it semantically coherent is not at all worth the time it takes to do so.

Just write your own articles or hire a competent writer and throw the spinners in the garbage.

Interesting - thanks.

It's already been noticeable that one of my blogs is doing very well with nothing more than a steady stream of high quality, pertinent information being added regularly. I've just written the content naturally with no keyword emphasis whatsoever. I've done absolutely nothing regarding SEO or backlinking.

Clearly, relevance and regularity are now playing a big part in how Google now sees you.

Good post just write high quality unique content for people first and Google second and you should be just fine.

It will be interesting to see what's in store.

"Attack"?

LOL

Perhaps "Making an Attempt to Focus More on Content" would be more accurate. If they can do it right, then it's a positive change.

All the best,
Michael

This update is an update against brute force link building an exact match anchor text both rom backlinks and within internal linking structure.

Have any of you sen those warnings in Webmaster Tools, yet? The ones that say you have unnatural links in your portfolio? That message is signed with, "We are pushing out a big ole algo update NEXT MONTH, and are warning you of your offenses." If you have not seen the message, it is because google does not see unnatural links in your portfolio.

Google is a bully.

Hi

Personally I think writing your own content for your own backlinks, think spinners can be used for backlinks to your backlinks to give them more weight but for direct links to your site definitely my own content.

I always write the articles or web 2.0s for humans go back and optimize then go back and look for linking opportunities.

This kind of work can be really time consuming but is worth it in the end.

Talk Soon
Joe

Your critique would be valid were it not for the qualifier "cutting edge".

In other words, the information conveyed (or at least intended to be conveyed) is that what people think of as automated content generation technology cannot be effective, let alone competitive, unless it is "cutting edge" natural language technology. Placed in context, it is clear that we are, and will be, dealing with substantial human intervention for at least the near future.

Did Mr Cutts say what they would do about great content that was over-optimized?

Let's see if there is any effect before crying 'Wolf'

being as they tell us that good content "will be rewarded" but isn't.

Am I the only person here who is jumping up and down with glee at this news?

If you visit all the backlink forums, they are all soiling themselves in fear at this announcement, not to mention some major blog/link farms were identified and slapped silly as a result of this new update.

-Chris

Speaking of natural language, what is the OP's natural language because it is not English. I don't even think Google can understand all those big words that aren't even in dictionary.com or used anywhere else on the web. Is there some strategy he is using with these words to garner more attention from google?

Note that this is not just one update, but has been prominently announced as an ongoing effort. In another article, Matt Cutts talked about how often Google updates its algorithms. The average? About ONCE A DAY. Most of the updates are very small, like adding better parsing for a particular language or more synonyms, but then we have big rollouts, like Panda was.

It is possible that spinners and software will keep going back and forth getting better and better (after all, if you use software to CHECK the articles, then software can GENERATE articles.... IF you know the rules). However, it is just plain better to write great content pointed at humans, while being aware of Google.

Right now I recommend 1-2% keyword density, using the keyword in first and last sentence of content, and in the page title, and once in h1, h2, and h3 tags. I also recommend checking and using related words, but not going crazy. lsikeywords.com is a great free site for seeing what Google might be using as related words.

I don't believe modest optimization like this will run afoul of Google. Instead, I expect it to be the right balance of being Google Friendly -- giving their software the reasonable hints it is looking for.

However -- the prime mantra remains - write quality content for humans and you should be fine.

Could anyone tell me exactly what do does it mean a high quality content? is it correct grammar sentences or punctuation or relevant content.

Also, the big G is doing a nasty plan to dominate all the IMers income and I can feel a monopoly strategic plan soon. They are the most hypocritical company I have ever seen. I still remember " Ads should not be above fold" Adsense issue.

Funny, I think we have to many dome and gloom IMer's here. Stay focused on creating quality content and you're not going to have any problems.

This update is a follow up to Google getting rid of sites that have too many ads on them. Look at all the sites Google just dumped in the last couple of months for Google Adsense. They don't care about the money. The care about the user experience. Sites that have too many ads and no content are the only ones that are really going to be effected by this.

I have been having clients call me, my coaching students calling me, for what? Something else to worry about?

The Sky Is Falling! LOL

Chaz Key

I wrote a post about it, go read it and leave me a comment. Just think you will get a nofollow backlink, lol.

http://nineeye.com/blog/google/why-is-google-going-to-penalize-overly-optimized-sites-seoed-sites/

@chazkey, so if we keep our old withing range SEO rules, sites will not be penalized?
What about the backlinking methods ? forum profiles, blog commenting, etc.......... ?

I'm surprised more of you didn't see this coming

Google has been developing semantic search since 2003 and now they're coupling it to the social aspects of search.

The couple of years are going to be very cool where SEO is concerned.

whoaa ...

An Overly Optimized Article = a Tautologic Article = crappy ... lol.

What happens if a very high quality page is "overly" optimized?

I like this idea. For those of us that actually spend time to write our own quality articles, we do not have to spend hours focusing on keywords, SEO, and backlinking. We can spend all of our time on writing great, original content. Google will reward us for this.

I'm glad that my search results will yield more quality information from great writers, rather than bad quality content written (or spun) by a "writer" that only spent time on SEO and backlinking.

If you are looking for good examples of writing, find yourself on old print encyclopedia set aimed at high school students. Almost without exception, the articles are well written with a robust vocabulary. If they include photos, there are captions to explain the photos. And when relevant, they point you to other articles in the encyclopedia to expand and broaden your knowledge on a subject area.

Sounds an awful lot like what google wants. But as pointed out, how do you teach a machine to really parse meaning to make the value judgements that a person can make about quality?

There is this great plugin called SEO-Presser that everyone thought was really amazing...

But this is the end of that stuff. You can't just stuff your content with the same keyword, and then bold it, underline it, etc and expect to rank for it.

Google doesn't just look for your keyword, it looks for variations of it.

I don't see what all this fuss is about. Readers want to read stuff that either:
A. Answers their question
or
B. Is relevant to their search topic
I think Google is doing a good job. They're getting junk sites out of the results pages, and that makes it easier to find what you're actually looking for.

Lots of SEO businesses just closed because of sites getting de-indexed. Poor people. That's what they get for being abusive.

This really isn't a big surprise here - Google are just putting into practice the important adage of "content is king". What they are saying is that you should spend more of your time creating good content that provides value to your readers (and those searching Google's index) RATHER than trying to game lower-quality content into an equivalent place.

It's a fair deal IMHO.

I actually just wrote a blog post about this new update at the Affilorama blog - check it out: Will Google Penalize Over-Optimized Websites? | Affilorama

A lot of good sites get penalized during Googles changes, why would this change be any different?

I'm sure some high quality sites will probably get slapped until Google is able to fine tune the algo to only slap crappy sites that are over optimized.

I've already seen blog posts and other threads from people who got the "unnatural link building" message even though (according to them) they only had a few links from blog networks and that only made up a small portion of their overall link strategy so it seems Google is being rather aggressive with this.

I was always under the impression that you couldn't be penalized due to spammy back links because otherwise your competitors would be able to get you penalized but it looks like I was wrong.

I got a message from Google today , I started to panic since I used a fiver gig for Article Samurai on some of my sites.. I used them once and I guess they built 130 links to my sites on 2 months period, the message was for joining Google adwords lol what a great relief..haha.. but I am worried that I will get deindexed as soon as they find that network..

I don't use it anymore and I am worried that if I ask the gig owner to remove my articles then Google will notice that and I bet they are watching the after math of their change on few blog networks, people now will panic and start removing the links and Google will see it and penalize them as its a proof that the owner did it.. why would a competitor remove the links

Fixed that for you.

SEO has always been regarded as a bug by search engine developers. The fact that it works at all means the search engine is not doing a good enough job. And they are hiring the smartest people they can find to fix this.

Now, maybe you think it's smart to base your business on the foundation that you are better at this than a small army of the smartest people that the richest companies on the planet can find.

And maybe monkeys will fly out of your butt, too.

I dont get Google now... nor will i ever get them later.

Thank you for sharing this. I like that Google idea, because most people are starting to abuse the true spirit of web content. If you want to earn Googlebot's attention then your website must have the appropriate content along with good optimization.

How long before Google is irrelevant? With so much traffic and time spent on sites like facebook and twitter at some point it will translate into less search and traffic on google sites.

That last part of too much exchanging links or going beyond what they'd expect.

I really. Reaaaally hope they're just talking about tracking outbound links to cut down on sidebar links or networks like 3WL etc...

If they're actually going to start smacking sites for getting links then it doesn't matter how great your content is - because someones going to pay $20 on Fiverr to get you a penalty and rank their crap above you.

Ranking on the quality of the site is a good step forward and pretty much what they've always tried to do. Ranking based on who seems to be doing the least offsite SEO is going to turn it into a mud flinging contest.

Calling it now. If this happens networks like BMR and ALN can open back up and people will pay their monthly fee to link to their competitors sites.

The ones that say you have unnatural links in your portfolio? That message is signed with, "We are pushing out a big ole algo update NEXT MONTH, and are warning you of your offenses."

I for one think it is great that Google is doing this, to flush out those SEO people who take shortcuts and try to get people on the first page without deserving to be there.

Google is helping naturally well-written content rank well.... except that in many cases they're really not. What it apears they may be doing is helping their advertising partners with huge corporate budgets rank well.

As an example I give you what I found today when I was looking to see if it would be worth changing the starter on my Jeep Grand Cherokee myself, or if I should take it in to my local auto care provider.

I searched on the term "How to Change a Starter on a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee"

What I got back was a page of SERs from sites like eHOW and autorepairwiki with the following oh so enlightening article:

"It may be best to change the starter in your Jeep Grand Cherokee if it is not functioning properly. Worn starters can begin to drag or lock up and not function at all. If your starter is exhibiting symptoms of wear, remove it from the truck and have it tested at an auto parts store. If you need a new one, you can purchase new and rebuilt starters through most auto parts stores and the Jeep dealership's parts department."

It may be best to change my starter if it is not functioning properly....REALLY???? I should remove it and have it tested? No ****, Sherlock!!

Unfortunately, that answer came not at all close to answdering the quesiton I actually asked, although there were several other verbatim copies of this garbage generality in other Google results on other simialar sites Google saw fit to rank in the top 10.

Where were actual sites and Jeep forums owned by non corporate webmasters, where you really find the kind of articles that revealed what changing a Jeep starter entailed? Buried down on page 5 and 6. Way to go G.

I do remember in 2003 or this time around where Google's market share was around 35% versus Yahoo and MSN. I hope one day this will return back cause people now rely mainly on G. and their smart engineers are just turning the tables on internet earners.

Well, from my point of view Google always gives good value to relevant (example: contextual) links and always treat content as king and gives penalty to over optimisation like using many keywords on a page for SEO purposes, and getting more backlinks (In other words, say using same anchor text to get many links... rather than using different anchor text), It seems they are going to be more smart based on above mentioned already stabled three important things on their algorithm,

Most of us have been preaching this for quite some time, its the only
logical path that Google's gonna take, build websites for communities,
for readers, and not for Google itself.

Its the only logical path that Google can take, and the one they need to take.
For far too long, lazy SEO has worked, and worked far too well. Granted SEO
will still exist and work fine, but the days of spin and spam are over.

Moving forward, build websites for USERS, for the people that are visiting your
site and care about what you have to offer. Building for a Google bot is a short
term strategy, and an in effective one at that.

I understand the thought process that Google has but just I don't see websites that are overly optimized being punished.

If Google's goal was to spread controlled panic, fear, and propaganda throughout the SEO community, then they have definitely succeeded.

2 of my clients dropped in ranks... everything else is normal here. Thankfully I never signed up for ALN or BMR... but ironically, the 2 clients that dropped had several ALN fiverr gigs purchased.

The day heard about this update, I stepped up my game, building more relevant links etc. May have just saved my ass...

Things are definitely being shaked up at the moment. I never fully optimize a website for "one particular" keyword. I like to have related keywords in other aspects of on-page seo. Always felt it looks more natural.

I don't mean to brag here. I'm not an expert in SEO or something like that.....Just share...

I have a website (local, actually) that survives Panda. He's hosted in WP, local hosting, and is 3 years in age. For the first year, it's in wordpress.com until I moved him to paid domain and hosting. The only "SEO" I did for him are pinging, adding relevant tag, and blogwalking. I rarely "stuff" keywords in him, leave alone counting keyword density. I updated him twice a month, sometimes once. This site generated 500 - 600+ UV/day, all organic. And yes, the traffic converted as well to sales, too. What I did over and over in 3 years are, giving my visitors what they want : in-depth, well-researched content, easy to navigate website. I knew a lot of sites nearby with my keywords are blatant salesy -- at least that's what my subscribers and visitors told me -- I do exactly the opposite : I ask myself ... "what do my visitors want when they visit my website?".

I've had my other English site failed and getting sandboxed no matter how I've tried to highly optimize it, while others thrive from guest blogging, twitter, and forum traffic, no SEO. After I've noticed the pattern what makes one survive and other flop, then it hit me : When I focused too much on search engine , making it uber-priority, rather than the visitors experience when they visit my site, they'll flop hard and fast.

You can make spun or auto-generated contents, play the keywords stuff in "suitable sentences" until it reached certain density, put script that matched your content with affiliate products, and have robotic troops sending bots for linking to your site. Then wham, you have a "ready-made, instant, optimized money-making website". But in the end, your consumers and visitors are humans. Humans can perceive value, robots can't. That's what the "new" Google considers.

Think of your website like a boutique. You can make your boutique right in the main boulevard, paying insane $$ to afford the rent, but got very little or mostly non-buying visits. People just see your boutique outside, and "bleh, no". But if you beautify the showcase, provide your boutique visitors the best experience they could, and most importantly....the superstar-like clothes in affordable price (quality, quality content), how would that make a difference?

So, does content still rules? My answer is, yes...more than ever, if you want to thrive in a long-term.

..........Again, just a little rant from a layman's eye .

Ya betta watch out!!!

Cause G Gonna Kick Ya In Ya Ding Ding....

I really thanks to google for doing this.. you know why, i've visited lots of sites that are on top of the google search but there is very bad quality content there and there are some sites that have low rank but there content is very good quality... so google should consider the content quality for the search rank...