As writers – or you might consider yourself an author or poet, on Yahoo! Associated Content you may have noticed a few dips in your page views lately. If you are not a writer on Associated Content you may not know what I am harping on about, I mean the amount of page views you as a reader contribute to an AC author’s articles, stories, poetry and any other source of literature we scribe.
So what has happened to your read totals (page views) since February 24th 2011, and maybe on into the future?
Your written content as you know will appear in the search engines as searchable content, Search Engines such as Yahoo!, Google and Bing place your content either high up in the pecking order or lower down the ladder. This is dependent on your contents originality and for some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, (SEO is not too important for maximum exposure in modern day Search Engines).
But the most popular Search Engine Google has just recently changed the goal posts for what they dub ‘Content Farms’, although we do not give credit to Yahoo! Associated Content as being a ‘Content Farm’, some of your content may have been affected by the recent changes in Google’s algorithm that has now been adopted in the famous Search Engine.
What this means for your content is that some of your composed articles may have dropped in the Search Engine ranks, the reason for this could be that your content appears on another Website, or has been treated as Spam (you may not consider your article as Spam), because of the over use of certain words.
Also Google’s new algorithm will weed out what it deems as useless information, you know that content that is just obviously poor quality reading material. I think we have all been guilty of writing a load of dross from time to time – I hold my hands up to that fact, although to some reader even that dross content can be seen as a humorous read.
So what caused Google to change its algorithm?
You the reader did!
How and why?
Because you the reader complained to Google that the content you have been landing on when you perform a Google search has been either useless information, Spam or complete garbage.
So Google who perform over 500 algorithm changes to its Search Engine every year, decided to start rooting out all those Websites they deem as ‘Content Farms’ which contain repeat information, content that is not original and appears on other Websites or absolutely chronic reading material. You all know what type of Website I mean, as you have had to have landed on one at some point during your surfing of the Internet.
Which Websites have been affected?
Those spammy Websites for starters and those sites that have little to no content, some forums will have been affected and for some who have just started their Website they may have seen a temporary shift to the lower ranks in the Google Search Engine.
Did I just say temporary?
Yes I did, for some webmasters it will be entirely up to them to keep up to speed with the changes, and it will be entirely dependent on how you compose your content.
As for the Google algorithm changes I cannot give you an answer on how long these changes will be in place, it could be permanent or it could be just until the habits of Internet surfers have changed.
Yahoo! Associated Content should not be affected too much because of the clout the Website has in the Search Engines, but it will be down to Associated content authors in respect to how they write and use their articles and content.
A little tip I would suggest is to try and keep your content as original and informative as you can (as you always do of course). As an experiment try to write a few original and informative, articles some of which you should place only on Associated Content and some that you may use elsewhere – then keep a check on how that content performs in your read totals. You may then start to see a trend and be able to fix any problems.
You may see Google’s algorithm as an unfair assault on your content, but this is not really the case. We all want to see the nasty Spam websites that place all manner of Malware, Spyware and Viruses on our computers disappear. We all want to be informed and land on relevant content related to our searches, so Google have to challenge us as Internet surfers and authors to go by the book, even help them weed out the dross.
Be patient, keep writing good content and you should be just fine. Keep a check on how your content is performing and make edited changes to content and titles if necessary.
