On September 28th, Google rolled out Panda 2.5. Yet again Youtube is the #1 site on the leader board, while even some branded sites like MotorTrend were clipped, and sites that had past recovered from Panda (like Daniweb) were hit once more. In the zero sum game of search, Google's Android.com joins YouTube on the leader board.
It doesn't matter what "signals" Google chooses to use when Google also gets to score themselves however they like. And even if Google were not trying to bias the promotion of their own content then any signals they do collect on Google properties will be over-represented by regular Google users.
Google can put out something fairly average, promote it, then iterate to improve it as they collect end user data. Publishers as big as MotorTrend can't have that business model though. And smaller publishers simply get effectively removed from the web when something like Panda or a hand penalty hits them. Worse yet, upon "review" search engineers may choose to review an older version of the site rather than the current site!
With that level of uncertainty, how do you aggressively invest in improving your website?
Over a half-year after Panda launched there are few case studies of recoveries & worse yet, some of the few sites that recovered just relapsed!
If you look at search using a pragmatic & holistic view, then this year the only thing that really changed with "content" farms is you can now insert the word video for content & almost all that video is hosted on Youtube.
To highlight the absurdity, I created another XtraNormal video. :)
References for the above video:
- early Google research about ad-driven search engines being biased toward the interest of advertisers & a post about Youtube counting their ad views as editorial views
- Google bought YouTube *then* rolled out universal search
- image of Google's internal "change copyright" propaganda strategy
- recent Google advert showing Youtube as the #2 search engine
- Compete.com's Google downstream search traffic stats are available with a premium membership to their site, & they do a good job of showing the actual traffic impact of the aggregate algorithmic changes. YouTube's growth is also well reflected in numbers from firms like SearchMetrics
- Here is an article about the Google $500 million fine for ads promoting sketchy pharmacies & here is an ad I just saw on Youtube warning against fake Viagra
Source: http://www.seobook.com/panda-25and-youtube-wins-again
sem search engine marketing internet marketing search engine search engine marketing
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