The Farmer Update

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Google calls it Panda, but most web developers outside of Google are calling it the Farmer Update. The idea is to punish websites that are “Content Farms“, or in layman’s terms, websites that do little more than copy content from other sites and stuff pages full of advertisements.

A Matter of Judgment

There will be notable exceptions to this broad description, subject to Google’s judgment on how authoritative a given website is on a particular subject. According to seomoz.org’s interpretations, Google will be getting more subjective with this update than they have in any updates in recent years. Here are some of their findings:

  1. It seemed that sites whose pages had fewer and/or less intrusive blocks of advertisements on them tended to be in the winner bucket, while those with more and more intrusive advertising tended to be in the loser group.
  2. Likewise, sites whose user interface design would likely be described as more modern, high quality, thoughtful and “attractive” were winners vs. the “ugly” sites that tended to be in the loser bucket.
  3. When it came to user-generated-content (UGC) sites, those that tended to attract “thin” contributions (think EzineArticles, Hubpages or Buzzle) lost, while those with richer, often more authentic, non-paid, and not-intended to build SEO value or links (think Etsy, DailyMotion, LinkedIn, Facebook) won.
  4. In the “rich content” sector, pages with less usable/readable/easily-consumable content (think AllBusiness, FindArticles) tended to lose out to similarly content-rich sites that had made their work more usable (think LOC.gov, HuffingtonPost)

The Takeaway

The takeaway from this change is that for the average B2C or B2B site, improving your website’s usability and design to a modern standard (what some still call Web 2.0) is more important than ever. Also, if your website incorporates user content, be sure to moderate contributions and/or only use trusted contributors.

The rest of the news (so far) seems to be good for honest websites. Because the Content Farms are being pushed down in the SERPs, this may free up room on page one of Google for your targeted keyword phrase. As Danny Sullivan of  seacrhengineland.com predicts for the impact on websites: “If they have lots of good content, and that good content is responsible for the majority of their traffic and revenues, they’ll be fine. In not, they should be worried.” Content is still king.