Google targets content farms with major algorithm change

Google's made a major change to its search algorithm, designed to deliver higher-quality results, which it says will noticeably affect nearly 12 percent of queries.

The move seems designed to weed out so-called 'content farms' which use search engine optimization techniques to push their sites to the top of the Google rankings. Many such sites have no original content at all - indeed, some stories have almost no content, consisting of just a couple of sentences. Nevertheless, they can perform well in searches.

"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," say Amit Singhal, Google fellow, and Matt Cutts, principal engineer.

"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."

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