Google’s recent change to its search algorithm has dramatically shaken up the businesses of websites that moved up or down its search rankings. Sites whose rankings rose to the top found that their traffic and revenue soared — but the adjustment had an equally devastating effect on those that were dropped.

The Online Publishers Association, a group of content producers comprising many of the Internet’s largest properties (including CNN.com), estimates that the algorithm change shifted $1 billion in annual revenue.

512Email Print Some of the losers felt the hit immediately. Mahalo.com laid off 10% of its workforce last week thanks to what CEO Jason Calacanis called “a significant dip in our traffic and revenue.”

The stakes are high in the Google-placement game. The top spot on a search page typically attracts 20% to 30% of the page’s clicks, according to Adam Bunn, SEO director of Greenlight. After that comes an enormous tail-off: Positions 2 to 3 generate 5% to 10% of the clicks, and links below the fold receive less than 1% of users’ attention. Fall off to the second page and your search-engine-driven clicks will be negligible.

With control of two-thirds of the U.S. search market, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) steers a tremendous amount of traffic to websites. Many of them rely exclusively on advertising dollars to make money.

That means that positioning in Google’s search results can be a life-or-death issue for a business.

Google’s change appears to have most harmed so-called “content farms” like Mahalo, which critics say amass content for the sole purpose of luring in search-engine traffic. Sites like Mahalo.com, Wisegeek.com, Ezinearticles.com and Yahoo’s (YHOO, Fortune 500) Associated Content were among the biggest losers in the algorithm tweak. Google-generated traffic to each dropped more than 75%, according to software firm Sistrix.

Interestingly, Demand Media (DMD) — one of the most oft-criticized content farms –appears to have gotten off relatively scot-free. Its most prominent site, eHow.com, even grew its traffic after the algorithm change, though some others like AnswerBag.com and Trails.com dropped off.

The biggest beneficiaries seem to be originators of what Google calls “high-quality” content, which the company defines as “information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” Traffic to sites that belong to the Online Publishers Association grew between 5% and 50% the day after Google’s tweak, according to Pam Horan, president of the OPA.

“This change was connected with who is driving the best experiences for the end user,” Horan said. “This is good for the consumer, good for the Internet, and good for publishers of higher-quality content.”

Impact on ‘mom and pop’ sites
Not everyone feels that Google got the change right.

Max Spankie, who operates customer review website My3cents.com, said his site lost a significant portion of its traffic and revenues overnight following Google’s algorithm change.

That came as quite a surprise to Spankie, since My3cents.com was recently recognized as the top consumer complaint site by the non-profit Consumer Federation of America. Unlike some of the sites that now top My3cents.com in Google’s rankings, all complaints on Spankie’s site are moderated. Hundreds of companies use the site to interact with customers.

“I thought they flipped the switch wrong,” Spankie said. “We work hard to be a quality site, and I definitely think the sites that are now winning in our niche aren’t about quality.”

Morris Rosenthal, a publisher of laptop repair how-to books and owner of the site FonerBooks.com, said that he too found Google’s new results curious.

For instance, a search for his book Laptop Repair Workbook now puts the book’s Amazon page as its first result (no problem there) — and a site that allows you to illegally download his book as its second result (big problem).

He also noticed that a search for “laptop inverter test” — a diagnostic test he wrote an instructional article on — now features two sites that link to his article ahead of his own site. His site used to be the top result.

Righting a wrong
For those who feel that Google made a mistake by lowering their sites in its rankings, the company says there’s an option: Webmasters can post in its discussion forum about the topic. Though no manual changes can be made, Google will often tweak its algorithm in response to legitimate challenges.

“Like many of the changes we make, we tested this update extensively and have found that the algorithm is extremely accurate at detecting site quality,” a Google spokesman said. “That said, search is a constant evolution and we will continue to listen to feedback from publishers and the community as we further refine our algorithms.”

Google said it is “very pleased” with the changes.

But that’s cold comfort to those who have seen their traffic and revenue tumble with little explanation why.

“It’s a system of guilty until proven innocent, and I’ve read about a lot of mom-n-pop sites reworking their sites and examining their souls, trying to figure out if they offended Google in some way,” said Rosenthal, who said traffic to his site tumbled 30%. “With Google it’s just, ‘Talk to the hand.’ They have no genuine two-way communication.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that the Online Publishers Association expected $1 billion in advertising revenue to shift to its members following Google’s algorithm change. The group says its actual estimate is that $1 billion will be redistributed across the online publishing industry.

How to make Google, and your visitors, love your site

If you are at all serious about succeeding online we highly recommend reading this guide. Based on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, these ten fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization really do work. And, they are easily within reach of most website owners with little or no technical skill.

Listen to what Google says about the importance of implementing their guidelines:

“Our Webmaster Guidelines outline some best practices that can help you avoid common pitfalls and improve your site’s ranking. We strongly encourage you to pay close attention to these guidelines.”

Following these 10 steps will not only improve your ranking in Google, they also work well for Yahoo!, Bing and most other search engines. They will also make your site more “friendly” to your visitors, and in the end, much more successful.

It’s easier than you think. Let’s get started!

1. XML Sitemap Submission

Technical Skill Requirement: None

Difficulty: Easy

Submitting an XML Sitemap is the best way of being sure search engines will discover your entire website. XML Sitemaps have replaced the older technique of “submitting to search engines” by filling out a form on each search engine’s submission page. Instead, an XML Sitemap containing detailed information about each page of your site is submitted directly to each of the top search engines.

Properly creating and submitting an XML Sitemap is the best, fastest and only guaranteed method of informing Google and the other top search engies about every page of your site. It’s the “foundation” of good SEO. Google invented the XML Sitemap process and says this about them: “Whether your site is old or new, large or small, we highly recommend submitting an XML Sitemap.”

Your SEO Tools account includes an automatic XML Sitemap creation and submission tool. It also gives you information on when Google and the other search engines read your sitemap, when they visit your site, and how many of your site’s pages Google lists in their search results. (The more the better)

Updating your Sitemap and resubmitting it on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis will increase its effectiveness even more. It’s also important to be sure your allocated Sitemap size is large enough to include all of your pages.

2. Building Links

Technical Skill Requirement: None

Difficulty:Ranges from Easy to Difficult

One of the most important elements (of the more than 200) that Google considers when ranking your site is the number and quality of links pointing to it. The general idea is that the more sites indicating that your content is valuable by linking to it, the better. As long as these links come from sites deemed to be of quality or authority (high search rank), the better your own search rank will be.

Never buy links. Period. You can be penalized for buying links, participating in paid “link building” programs, or having links from sites that Google has blocked, such sites involved in link selling or any sort of criminal activity, or sites containing viruses.

A common legitimate link building activity is directory submission. Submission can range from just your name and homepage URL to an extensive business profile. Always make sure any content you post to directories is unique, readable and human friendly. Never submit strings of comma-separated keywords that will be seen as spam content.

It is always best to list your site only in the most important, authoritative and reputable directories. Avoid the “list your site in thousands of directories” offers. Most are a waste of time. Not all directories are equal, and many to the hundreds or even thousands of directories that some online services offer to post your site to are completely useless, or could even be on Google’s black list.

There are many other ways to quickly develop high quality links that work, including professionally syndicated press releases, syndicated verified business listing services, submitting articles to or commenting on blogs and forums, starting your own blog, getting local government (.gov), educational (.edu), or business association links by working with those organizations, submitting product reviews and answers on sites like Yahoo! Answers, writing submissions in related forums and user groups, and last but not least, participating in Social Networking activates such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

However, the best way to get quality links to your site is to write good content. If it’s original, informative and interesting people will want to link to. If you haven’t got the skill or time necessary to write great content there are professional, SEO savvy content writers available to fit just about any budget. We have developed our Pro Content service as a good low-cost alternative to writing your own. Content can be an investment that really pays off.

3. Eliminating Broken Links and Error pages

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Easy

Broken links that produce “Page Not Found” error messages are harmful to your site. They reduce search engine crawling efficiency and accuracy, meaning that some of your content may not be listed (or indexed) in search engine databases. They also “dilute” your site’s overall page rank. Plus, they are also one of the easiest ways to lose potential customers. Broken links and error messages create a highly negative and unprofessional impression to visitors, frequently causing them to leave and not return.

We strongly recommend regularly checking your entire site for error pages. Your SEO Tools account includes a broken links report and tool that helps find both the error page URL and all the links to it within your site. Use the tool to remove all internal links to error pages, and then use the solutions below for any possible external links to them.

Create a Custom 404 Error Page A good 404 error page advises visitors that they’ve hit an invalid URL, and then provides other links to direct help them to their intended destination.

Use 301 Redirects If you move or rename pages, use 301 redirects to automatically transfer them from the old page location to its new permanent home. This redirect is anonymous to your site visitor.

If you can’t implement custom 404 pages or 301 redirects, contact your web developer for assistance.

4. Make Your Site Easy to Navigate

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Easy

Add a HTML navigation site sap and site search box to you site to improve “user experience.” This not only helps convert visitors into customers, and helps keep them coming back, it results in higher search rankings. Google rewards sites with good navigation because they want their users to have a good experience when they click on a search result. It’s in Google’s best interest to promote sites with good navigation to their users, and it’s in your own best interest to be one of those sites.

Your SEO Tools account includes a free SEO Badge that lets you easily add an HTML site map, Google Site Search box, a Local Search listing and Google Map listing.

5. Choose the Right Keywords or Key-Phrases to Target

Technical Skill Requirement: None

Difficulty: Easy

Choose two or three highly targeted keywords or key phrases for each page of your site, including your Home Page. (In the next step you will learn how to produce the content of your site based on them)

Choose very carefully because keywords you think might be perfect may not be what people actually search for. For example, never use general keywords such as “travel” or “vacation.” Very large, well-known sites usually rank the highest for general words such as these, and are extremely difficult, if not, impossible, to dislodge in search listings. You will enjoy much better results by targeting less competitive, more specific and narrowly targeted keywords or phrases.

Google’s two free keyword tools below are a great way to discover keywords that may be worth targeting in your content. Simply enter the URL of one of your pages, or a competitor’s page. Google will analyze the contents of that page and give you a list of potential keywords along with traffic and competitive information.

Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool

Google’s Adwords Keyword Research Tool

6. Learn a Little Simple Basic HTML

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Low

HTML is a language used by web browsers to dynamically format web pages. Many important SEO techniques require only very simple edits to your site’s HTML code. Knowing what to change and how to adjust your HTML code has a huge effect on your SEO and search listings. Don’t worry; learning the basics of simple HTML is not difficult. (However, if you are using a web designer or outside web developer to implement these simple changes to your site, keep in mind that they are just that: simple. They should not take too long to complete once you know how to tell them exactly what to do.) W3School’s free tutorials are all you need: (http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp)

7. Create Fresh and Unique Content Using Your Keywords

Technical Skill Requirement: None

Difficulty: Low to Moderate

Publishing keyword-rich original content is absolutely crucial to ranking highly. All you need to do is transform your list of carefully selected keywords into pages of unique web content. Write pages of at least 200 words of unique text, incorporating one, two, or at the most three of your chosen keywords into the copy of each page. Your home page may have less content, but should target your most important two or three keywords.

What does unique text mean? It means that you produce original content. It means you haven’t simply copied verbatim from other websites or blogs. If you don’t have enough of your own ideas about content look at what other have written, then re-write it making it better. You can make it shorter and more concise, or longer and more detailed. Just don’t copy it.

Search engines must find and “read” keyword rich copy on your pages so they can properly classify or “index” your site. The frequency (or density) of keyword usage is also important. For best results repeat each keyword or phrase, or variations of the phrase, 2 to 4 times within your copy (depending on its length). Be sure to put it at least once in a headline using the <H1> or <H2> HTML code. More is not better. A higher keyword density than this can often cause search engines to penalizing your site. Never use “invisible text” or text on your Web pages that is the same color as the background. It will also result in search engine penalties.

Placing keywords on your website:

Your website content should be written first for real people, and second for search engine crawlers. For your website to be successful you need to keep both in mind. Keywords are important for both audiences. They help real people skim your page, and help the search engines figure out what your page is about.

Writing marketing copy for your website doesn’t need to be difficult and it surely doesn’t need to be lengthy. In fact, keep three simple things in mind, along with your keywords, and it’ll practically write itself: Benefits, Benefits, Benefits!

Don’t just tell the customer you have a great widget at a great price. Tell them what that widget will do to make their lives better, easier, safer, more important. If it saves them time, improves results, etc. – tell them that, and briefly tell them how. Show then the Benefits, not the “features.”

Always tell the truth. You can say anything ,but if its intentionally misleading, your profits and your business are going to be short-lived. Make your website copy sizzle, and make it sell, but always make it honest.

Make it personal: all about You and Your. It might not seem like much, but if you can drop ?your? into your copy, it?s sure to draw the customer in, whether they realize it or not.

Before you put up new content on your site, read it and then read it again out loud. If you can, have someone else look it over. There?s nothing worse publishing great copy that?s tarnished by typos.

Nine good places to use your keywords:

1. In your page title. This is what appears at the top of the browser window when someone visits your website. (See step 8 below)

2. In your page description. Visitors don’t see this, but the search engines do. This is the two lines of text that appear below the main title in search engine results. (See step 9 below)

3. In your page URL. Use keywords, not strings of alphanumeric characters, in the URLs of each page of your site. Search engines will index them much better and display them higher in search results. Creating page URLs with keywords helps those pages rank higher. Simply insert the linked-to page’s targeted keyword phrase into the hyperlink whenever possible. Here is a good example from Allrecipes.com: Allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fettuccini-with-Salsa-Cruda-and-Feta/Detail.aspx

4. In the headings and subheadings. Make it easy for your readers to very quickly see what your page is about by using lots of headings and subheadings.

5. In the first sentence and your first paragraph. Make sure your important keywords appear first — the earlier, the better.

6. In the last paragraph. Also use your keywords at the end of your content.

7. Elsewhere in the page copy. When keywords fall naturally throughout your article, consider bolding them. But don’t go overboard with it or it will become a distraction. However, if it makes the article easier to skim, bold your keywords.

8. In your text links. Instead of linking to words like “click here,” use your keywords in your link anchor text.

9. In the ALT tags on images. The search engines can’t understand images. With every image, include a bit of text called the ALT tag and use your keywords in that text. (See step 10 below)

8. Title Tag Optimization

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

This is what the title tag on Dell.com looks like: <META NAME=”TITLE” CONTENT=”Dell – Official Website – Learn about Dell’s laptops, desktops, monitors, printers plus computer electronics & accessories. “>

HTML title tags are critical because search engines use them when deciding what a web page is about. Using descriptive words and phrases in your Title tags helps both people and search engines better understand the focus of the page. Include your most important keywords in this tag. Space is limited (use a maximum of 69 total characters) so don’t include your company name unless you really think it needs to be there (as in our example from Dell). Do not use the Title tag to display irrelevant information such as “Home Page.” Think of it more as a “Title Keyword Tag” and include words that users would likely search for to find the product or service or other information on that page.

Lengths of Page Title (taken from your Title Tag) Displayed in Search Engines (including spaces):
Google displays up to 69 characters, Yahoo displays up to 72 characters, Bing displays up to 69 characters

The Title tag is the most important tag to optimize on your webpage because:

• Search engines place a lot of importance on the words used in the title tag when determining your page ranking and keyword indexing.
• They are used as the title for your search engine results listings, giving a critical “first impression” to search engine users.
• They are used as the bookmark heading when someone bookmarks a page in your site.

Good Title Tags Made Simple

Here’s a simple method for writing title tags that will boost your rankings:

• Start the title with the top keyword or phrase for which you are trying to get high rankings. Be sure that the keyword is well used on your webpage so the Title Tag is clearly relevant to the page as a whole.
• Insert a hyphen or double-colon to separate the initial keyword from what comes next to help make the title more readable.
• Then describe the webpage in five words or less while using all or part of your target keyword or phrase again.

9. Description Tag Optimization

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

The Meta Description Tag is the next most important tag, since search engines frequently use it as the description for your page’s listing. The content in your description tags often appears as the “snippets” of text underneath the blue Title tag headline in search results pages. A well written description tag increases the chance that your search listing will be clicked on.

Here is an example: a keyword search for “big mac” produces the following result as the third organic listings:

By visiting the McDonalds.com home page and viewing the page source, you can see that the snippet above simply reuses the first 149 characters of the page’s meta description:

<meta name=”description” content=”McDonald’s in the USA: Food and nutrition info, franchise opportunities, job and career info, restaurant locations, promotional information, history, innovation and more.” />

Here is what you should do to optimize your description tags:

• Create a unique meta description tag for each page that uses its keywords.
• Create “meaty” description tags that accurately describe the page and product to search users and respect the character limits noted below.
• Include words that users would most likely search for to find the product, service or information on that page.

Meta Description Lengths Displayed in Search Engines (including spaces) Google displays up to 156 characters Yahoo displays up to 161 characters Bing displays up to 185 characters

Good Description Tags Made Simple Begin the description tag with the same keyword phrase you used in the title tag, followed by a dash or double colon. Then use it to start a sentence describing your webpage in 10 to 15 words.

Here are a few guidelines to follow when writing description tags:

• The entire tag should be no longer than 22 words (156 characters).
• It should briefly describe the webpage and entice users to click on your listing.
• The keyword should be used no more than two times in total.

Here’s a simple layout for writing description tags that will boost your rankings:

[Your Keyword or Key Phrase] – [A Brief Description of Page]

If you only have a little time to optimize your site for better search engine rankings, at least write good Title and Description tags. They are a fundamental requirement for improved search ranking.

Note: The Keyword meta tag is not given ANY consideration at all by Google or the other major search engines and should not be used.

10. Take Advantage of Other Simple HTML Opportunities

Technical Skill Requirement: Low

Difficulty: Easy

Don’t overlook other HTML code elements to extract a little more love from the search engines. You can boost your rankings and nudge visitors along your “buy path” by providing more information in your HTML code. Here are some of the ways you can easily boost your search engine rankings:

Use text headings (using heading tags <H1><H2><H3>) Text placed within a heading tag is used to briefly describe the topic of the section of a page it introduces. The use of text “heading” tags is important to the user as visual clues, but they are also used to indicate the importance of the words or phrases to the search engines. It allows search engines to make better sense of the words and phrases on the page in a way that changes in font size doesn’t. Some sites don’t use them because they don’t like the way they look, but heading tags can easily be made to look any way you like by including them in your style sheets.

Use Inter-site “anchor text” links Creating keyword-rich internal text links within your site will also help. Use this tactic in moderation as too many links between your pages can actually harm you. Testing has shown good results by creating links between the first 10 pages that you will find listed in.

Google’s results when you search for site:www.mydomain.com (simple add “site:” to your home page URL, all as one word, and search for that “combined” word in Google)

Use Image Alt Tags Alt tags (Alternative Text Tags) were developed so that if an image is unavailable, you can still see an alternative text description of it.

However, alt tags are also an additional type of content, in which you can display information to visitors and search engines by using the alt and title attributes, like this: <img src=”smilingbaby.gif” alt=”Smiling Baby” title=”Smiling Baby”/>. Note that search engines will index the both the alt and title content, but usually prefer the title content if available.

11. Your Bonus Tip: Develop (or Exercise) Patience

Technical Skill Requirement: None

Difficulty: Moderate

Don’t expect quick results. Using these simple techniques will indeed deliver more traffic from Google and other search engines, but it takes a little time. There’s no getting around that fact. Once you start following the steps above, your site’s ranking will slowly but surely rise. While you should start seeing results within weeks, big improvements usually requires a little more time and effort. However, these efforts ALWAYS pay off

Take the time to keep implementing the Google Guidelines. Google rewards sites meeting their guidelines with higher placement in search results, and more search traffic.

Let’s face it: these days, when someone says they’re going to search something online, they might as well go ahead say they’re going to “Google it.” The stats clearly show that Google has no real competitors in computer based searching, and when it comes to mobile search, the two words are truly synonymous at an astonishing  97% going to Google. As a result, when the search engine giant targets you as an undesirable search result, its’ a big deal. Just ask JC Penney.

A little under a month ago, Google did just that; their target in this case being ‘content farms.’ The term has become the widely accepted one to describe, as Wikipedia puts it:

…a company that employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines. Their main goal is to generate advertising revenue through attracting reader page views.

Also on Google’s you-know-what list were what Danny Sullivan coined ‘Scraper’ sites in his excellent article on the subject. These are sites that shamelessly ‘scrape’ high search-traffic content from elsewhere and duplicate it on their own pages.

Helpful, no?
As you might guess, the implementation of the update was met with much elation by sites unaffected and the everyday search engine user. Google proudly announced the update affected nearly 12% of their search queries; a number even more telling when you take into account the fact that the update, to begin with, only impacted the U.S.  They also pointed out that 84% of the most blocked domains identified by their Personal Blocklist extension for the Google Chrome browser were independently addressed by the algorithm update.

So all’s well that ends well, right? We, the searchers get higher quality results. Websites with better content deservedly go up in the rankings, and only content-farms and ‘scraper sites’ go down. Giant companies with content farms in their holdings made a bazillion dollars of ad-revenue, but will now need to find another venture.

If you believe that, there are also a few bridges I would like to offer you for immediate and inexpensive purchase.

The most obvious outcry has come from the content providers who claim to have been unjustly targeted by the update. And while a few of those arguing their case might as well well change their URL to ‘contentfarm#3.com’, a large number seem to be victims of an imperfect algorithm.

Click for full size image
A Wired magazine article highlights the case of Cult of Mac, an Apple oriented blog that no one in their right mind would consider a content farm or other type of low quality or ‘spammy’ content provider. Yet the blog was determined to have fallen 96% in SEO firm Sistrix‘ before and after comparison. It’s worth noting that Sistrix’ proprietary ‘Visibility Index’ uses a farily complex valuing system as opposed to just counting keywords or clicks.

After Google was peppered by questions for the Wired story, Cult of Mac’s status has since been reinstated – but others haven’t been so lucky. The article is followed by a mass of comments that come mostly from webmasters of and contributors to sites claiming the following describe their site:

•All original content
•Content is recognized as high quality
•Other sites have plagiarized their content
So what’s a webmaster to do? Drop Google a line and hope – the search giant has started a thread in their support forum, but made it clear that the data received will go to their engineers to study and incorporate as they see fit in future updates. Translation: maybe your site will be reinstated to full ‘Google Juice’, and maybe not.

Knowing that there’s strength in numbers, impromptu support groups for those affected have even popped up in forums around the net. While this may sound somewhat laughable at first blush, remember that many of the affected individuals are running sites that may be a large source of income.

To think, however, that this is evidence of Google being evil, would be silly. No algorithm is perfect. Google has said so in so many words. Interestingly though, their release announcing the algorithm update made no mention of content farms – rather, simply an attempt to weed out lower quality content. A wise choice, since a huge can of worms would have been opened if Google was explicitly claiming to be categorizing sites as content farms. An entry on Google’s blog a month prior, however, minces no words about the type of sites that were in their sights.

But some are claiming that Google purposely targeted certain other sites with ulterior motives. Some have suggested that certain domains were targeted because they are competitors to Google’s services such as Google Maps and Google Shopping.

Others draw attention to the cases of Demand Media and Associated Content. The widespread view is that both of these umbrella companies are mostly made up of sites that provide what would be considered ‘content-farm’ type material. Yet Demand Media saw far less of its content affected with one of its holdings, the well known ehow.com, actually seeing improvement in its Google standing after the update.  Associated Content, conversely, saw two-thirds of its content fall in Google search rankings. Why the tongue wagging and finger pointing? Last year, Associated Content was purchased by Yahoo.

So which is it? Is Google, in a never ending quest to provide users with the best service possible, simply tuning their engine closer to perfection? Or are they, with their near monopoly status, flexing their muscles and weeding out those they find undesirable, with the occasional competitor getting the old heave-ho? While it’s impossible to say for sure at this point, a safe guess seems to be almost entirely column ‘A’, with just a wee bit of column ‘B’.

You may notice that Google is functioning a little differently today. The search engine recently made a major change to their search algorithms in order to strike back at so-called “content farms”. These sites, which feature large amounts of mass-produced content angled to rank high on Google, have been accused of reducing the overall quality of search results. Demand Media, owners of eHow, are perhaps the best-known content farm.

Google expects these changes to affect roughly 12% of search results. 84% of the top dozen blocked domains on Google Chrome were included in the sweep. Since this is a blanket change, there is some fear that it could cause issues for legitimate sites. Sorting the good sites from the bad ones is complicated by the fact that many content farms also have legitimate arms. For example, Demand Media also owns Cracked.com, which is very definitely not a ‘farmed’ site.

Demand responded to these changes earlier today. Their EVP of Media and Operations noted that some of their properties rose and some fell due to the move. He did state that “at this time” Demand has not seen a material impact on their business from the change.

While every piece of analysis you’ll find on this change will mention the phrase “content farms”, Google has avoided using that term. Matt Cutts, of Google’s spam fighting team, told Search Engine Land that “I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”