[img_thumb]http://www.grumpyoldeafies.com/logo-bbc.jpg[/img_thumb]
[release]Google has defended recent changes to its search system that reduced the prominence of some popular websites.
One of the worst hit by the "Panda" update was Ciao.co.uk, a Microsoft-owned company that had been leading an EU competition case against Google.
Its web visibility fell by 94% according to analysis by Searchmetrics.
Google's head of search evaluation, Scott Huffman, said it was "almost absurd" to suggest that the results were rigged.
The company regularly changes the algorithms that determine what users see when they search.
Rankings
Such updates are often done to weed out "content farms" - websites that copy material from other sites in order to get hits.
Where a keyword search may previously have returned their site on Google's first page, afterwards it may be relegated to further down the rankings.
When the update, known as Panda, was rolled out globally on 11 April, Google published a blog post explaining that it was designed to "reduce rankings for low-quality sites".
Shopping and price comparison sites such as Ciao.co.uk sometimes suffer when Google algorithms change because they carry comments and reviews replicated elsewhere on the internet.
However, experts said that it was unusual to see a legitimate website hit as badly as Ciao.
"A 94% drop is astronomical," said Sanjay Shelat, a search engine optimisation (SEO) specialist at Edit Optimisation.
"It is very unusual to take such a hit in an update. That is enough to put a company under."
[img]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/52185000/jpg/_52185669_ciao.co.uk_opi.jpg[/img]
Searchmetrics claims that the search visibility of Ciao.co.uk fell by 94% after Google's Panda update.
Competition case
Ciao.co.uk was involved in initiating an EU investigation into Google in November 2010.
Parent company, Microsoft, claims that Google has used its dominant position to limit rivals' products.
The BBC asked Microsoft if it thought the downgrading of Ciao results was related to the legal action, but Microsoft said it would not be commenting on the situation "at this time".
When questioned by news agency AFP, Google's Scott Huffman said: "If you think of the scale of what we are talking about, it is almost absurd to say we could rig results."
Mr Huffman pointed out that the update had received a very positive response from Google users.
Search visibility
Searchmetrics analysed Google results in response to a range of keywords, both before and after the Panda update.
Alongside Ciao's 94% reduction in visibility, it found that hubpages.com fell by 85% and eHow.co.uk dropped 53%.
A similar analysis by Sistrix found a 81% drop in visibility for Ciao.co.uk, 72% reduction for hubpages.com and an 84% fall for eHow.co.uk.
While a sharp drop in visibility may constitute a crisis for some websites and their search engine optimisation (SEO) engineers, it does not necessarily spell disaster.
Technology news website Electricpig.co.uk was downgraded by 94% by the Panda update, according to Searchmetrics.
Site editor James Holland told BBC News: "We haven't seen an immediate impact.
"Comparing our traffic from Google for that week, we're actually only down 0.5% versus the week before Panda took effect.
"That suggests most of the keywords Searchmetrics are measuring us against weren't being clicked anyway, and our best-performing stuff is still doing the business."
[/release]
[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13091708]Source[/url]
You know that's just great.
Wow goggle is the most evel compeny time 4 boycott
Need a tl;dr for people because it's a misleading title. If you read the whole article it says that the site's actual traffic hasn't really been affected, just the visibility on Google. It could possibly be that Google took out a bunch of unrelated search-terms that still linked to the site. who knows.
How is it a misleading title?
There's nothing suggesting that the site's traffic's been affected, at least I don't remember such a thing from reading it.
Ciao results are annoying when I'm searching for stuff on google.
I've never even heard of Ciao.
This was my first time as well.
I guess I'm no longer a virgin.
Good, every time I search for something I get three god damn pages of Ciao pages and it's fucking ridiculous. I hope the site goes down.
[QUOTE=imadaman;29264439]How is it a misleading title?[/QUOTE]
It was for me. I somehow thought Google had struck a panda on arrival on an airplane or whatever and then was denying it. :saddowns:
Ciao sucks, give up Microsoft.
Google will soon own everything!!!!111 Next they'll own facebook!on11e!!!
Fuck this, I need to start saving for my Google Bunker NOW.
[QUOTE=imadaman;29264439]How is it a misleading title?
There's nothing suggesting that the site's traffic's been affected, at least I don't remember such a thing from reading it.[/QUOTE]
I read it assuming a pet Panda owned by google was hitting on one of their rivals.
It's hard not to be evil when the very motion of your titanic toes straining in your collosal shoes can have life destroying effects on a company like the BBC
That's the problem with being a monopoly I guess
[QUOTE=venn177;29270696]I read it assuming a pet Panda owned by google was hitting on one of their rivals.[/QUOTE]
I thought that this article was going to be about a panda hit-man that killed Ciao's panda.
Well purposeful or not, they fucked them up lol
I haven't even heard of this Panda update so I'm assuming this is blown out of proportion.
[quote] (SEO) specialist[/quote]
lol
SEO is the art of shouting "bear" at the top of your lungs and hoping that for a brief second, someone will mistake it for "cigarette"
lol [i]ciao[/i] Ciao
[QUOTE=DOG-GY;29280924]I haven't even heard of this Panda update so I'm assuming this is blown out of proportion.[/QUOTE]
[release]Finding more high-quality sites in search
2/24/2011 06:50:00 PM
Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.
Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.
We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.
It’s worth noting that this update does not rely on the feedback we’ve received from the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, which we launched last week. However, we did compare the Blocklist data we gathered with the sites identified by our algorithm, and we were very pleased that the preferences our users expressed by using the extension are well represented. If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them, which is strong independent confirmation of the user benefits.
So, we’re very excited about this new ranking improvement because we believe it’s a big step in the right direction of helping people find ever higher quality in our results. We’ve been tackling these issues for more than a year, and working on this specific change for the past few months. And we’re working on many more updates that we believe will substantially improve the quality of the pages in our results.
To start with, we’re launching this change in the U.S. only; we plan to roll it out elsewhere over time. We’ll keep you posted as we roll this and other changes out, and as always please keep giving us feedback about the quality of our results because it really helps us to improve Google Search.
Update April 11: We’ve rolled out this algorithmic change globally to all English-language Google users and incorporated new signals as we iterate and improve. We’ll continue testing and refining the change before expanding to additional languages. You can learn more on our Webmaster Central Blog.[/release]
Didn't we HAVE this thread already?
[QUOTE=Motherfucker;29270768]It's hard not to be evil when the very motion of your titanic toes straining in your collosal shoes can have life destroying effects on a company like the BBC
That's the problem with being a monopoly I guess[/QUOTE]
It's funny how you mention the BBC, despite the BBC being entirely funded by taxpayers.
"almost absurd" keyword almost.
He kind of left an obvious hole for someone to use to attack him with.
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