New Google algorithm combats content farmers

In an effort to combat the effect of 'content farms,' Google have announced the roll out of a new algorithmic change in the USA which has affected the rankings of 11.8% of sites.

Sistrix has been monitoring the effect of the update, known as "Farmer," on a dataset of one million keywords. Their list of the top 25 'losers' includes a number of popular article submission websites including wiseGEEK and eZineArticles.

UK website owners are expecting to see the effects of Farmer over the coming weeks. On the Official Google Blog, Amit Singhal states.

To start with, we’re launching this change in the U.S. only; we plan to roll it out elsewhere over time. We’ll keep you posted as we roll this and other changes out, and as always please keep giving us feedback about the quality of our results because it really helps us to improve Google Search.