Fallout from Google’s New Content Quality Standards

While traveling back from my latest trip out of town, I came across an interesting article in Website Magazine discussing the now infamous Google Panda Update, and how content farms, such as Demand Studios, WiseGeek and Associated Content are currently ranking in the search engines following Google’s highly publicized new algorithm which is intended to improve the quality of content published on the web.

Content mills have long been accused of favoring quantity over quality when it comes to the typical, keyword dense, mass content they instruct their writers to generate. Now I’m not injecting my own opinions here about whether or not writing for content mills is worth a writer’s time. I think that dead horse has been kicked around enough. Besides, I assume that the readers of this blog are mature enough to decide for themselves what works in terms of freelancing and overall earning potential. The purpose of this post is to share facts about how these new changes are playing out.

For a long time content mills have enjoyed top ranking spots in Google’s search engine results, however Googles’ Farmer Update for February revealed that the mills serps have been “severely penalized.” In fact, Website Magazine reports that “Mahalo, another member of the content-farming community, was hit so hard that it had to eliminate 10-percent of its workforce shortly after the change” (Website Magazine, May, 2011).

These findings, based of the Organic Performance Index, are further evidence that the days of poorly written, shallow, useless content achieving premium search engine results appears to be coming to an end.

This is good news for freelance writers. If you’re a writer capable of delivering high-quality, valuable, original content for your clients, these changes could certainly reveal the true value of your freelance writing services.