Over the past few months I’ve been fairly quiet about the last several updates from Google. If you’ve not been keeping up, back in April Google released a fairly large update to their search algorithm where, among other things, they started applying feedback from consumers into their search results. Overall it was good news for those using Google as it was a strong attempt by Google to weed out content and spam farms from the search results. Unfortunately however, for many legitimate sites (including groovyPost), the changes had a fairly significant negative impact on organic search traffic.
In other words, after the April 11 update codenamed: Panda, here on groovyPost we experienced a drop in traffic of about 40%. Obviously I’ve been working hard to figure out how-to improve over the past 30 days and I’m happy to say we’ve recovered significantly by making a few tweaks here and there but this evening I decided to do some additional testing and that’s when I discovered the Google Search results are still a little funky as they are still ranking websites who steal repost our content word-for-word above our original posts.
Odd isn’t it….
How does it make me feel? Well, what needs to be said? That’s just the way it is. No need to freak out about it (although it is terribly annoying). I know Google is trying their best to get Junk off the internet and after all, Google is a business just like any other. Google Search is NOT a public service so I really don’t have any expectations from them. If they want to screw around with their search algorithms, super! If they want to adjust search results to funnel traffic to sites which brings in the most Adsense revenue, great! It’s a corporation and like all corporations, they are in business to make money, not provide a public service to people like me.
So, rather than Rant-and-Rave about it and demand Google fix something that may or may not be broken, I’m not going to worry about it. I’m just going to continue doing what we do best here at groovyPost: Create original, super groovy content for our amazing readers!
I’m confident that over the long-run, Google will get things figured out and our traffic levels will return to the growth levels we’ve been experiencing over the past several years. A good businessman will never put all his eggs in 1 basket so this is a good reminder to all. Our future traffic may come from Google, Bing, Reddit, Stumbleupon or perhaps Facebook??? Oh no… did I actually tell you how-to delete your facebook account? Uh oh.. Nothing like biting the hand that feeds you! ;)
Anyway, So, it’s been an amazing ride these last 4 years and I have no plans on going anywhere because I love what I do, writing groovyPosts! So stay tuned for some groovy announcements shortly and thank you for all your support!
Ok, got that off my chest… We will now return to our normal programming!
10 Comments
Leave a Reply
Leave a Reply
Robert
Hear hear!!
Anon
I get the same results. In fact when I go to the two top links, the first one ask you to login or create an account, second one leads to a link that links to groovy post which is the third link. Google is fcn dumb. I actually wonder how much important stuff google leaves out & replaces with worthless crap results when you actually search something, ex. groovy’s results above. Makes me wanna rage.
groovinJackman
That is … so weird.
groovinJackman
I just want to understand the rationale. Usually, Google is very good about telling people how their algorithm works, at least in general terms. But the latest update was supposed to counteract these “scraper” sites and penalize duplicate content. It seems to have had the opposite effect.
And I am PRETTY sure that no one would think that groovyPost was a spam site and add us to their personal block list. It’s not like we focus on articles about Acai/Botox/night school/subprime credit cards.
grumble grumble
JenB
Doesn’t seem fair no but, at least you can look at the positive side! People appear to like your groovypost content enough to copy it! That’s a bright side isn’t it. :)
Simon
If you can proove to Google, you wrote the original article, the copycats will be degraded from the search result.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-search-and-search-engine-spam.html
Pretty much, is that your answer. The others are spamming, because of copying. You could try to e-mail Google.
Besides that, always first send a notice of infringement.
There’s another article on the googleblog, but I can’t find it, about copycats and how to deal with them.
Ziggy
When doing a generic search using the internet what amazes me most is the rampant plagiarism without due credit to the original writer(s). Since discovering Groovypost I have been pleasantly surprised by the well written and informative articles, tips and suggestions. Keep up the good work. I for one will continue to visit this excellent site.
Anon
smartass has you at the top of their search engine LOL.
http://www.smartass.com/search/results.php?query=how+to+disable+firefox+missing+plugin+notification&cat=web&page=1
MrGroove
SmartAss? LOL – Never heard of these guys but apparently, they have their search together on this one. ;)
dillagr
you can use copyscape (http://www.copyscape.com/) to protect your content.
haven’t tested their service though but it was suggested by a good friend.