I am sure by now you have all heard about Googles latest farmer update that is designed to cut down on sites that are considered content farms to generate ad revenue. Google is rightly so trying to provide more in-depth and targeted results.
“Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible…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. 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…” – Official Google Blog Feb 24th
Danny Sullivan’s article Number Crunchers: Who Lost In Google’s “Farmer” Algorithm Change? Has some very interesting data on which sites are affected and by how much. I have copied his top 100 sites that are affected below.
There are two effects Google’s changes will have on lead generation.
- Many of these sites are used as 3rd party lead gen sites for lead companies that put their lead generation forms and or ads on their site. The immediate effect is less leads will be generated however some of these sites have always delivered poor quality leads some generated by white papers so the effect may not be all that bad for the end user buying a lead and may help the lead industry.
- Many lead generations sites improve their organic ranking by providing articles to content farms. By doing this they get high quality inbound links. In a short period of time many of the high quality links will be considered low quality links and will drop the lead gen’s site ranking. This will decrease the number of organic leads they receive effecting their profit margins.
What does this all mean? Perhaps lead quality will improve although there will be less leads. Google will provide better quality results… perhaps but certainly in the short term lead gen companies are going to have to increase their Google PPC campaigns to make up for the offset in acquired leads.
In the top 100 most effected sites below you will see all lead categories effected from education, health, business to business etc.
Sistrix: Most Keyword Rankings Lost
Upon request, Sistrix will send people a full list of 331 domains that were found to have lost in its analysis. With Sistrix’s permission, here are the top 100 domains that suffered losses, sorted by total number of keyword positions lost. Also show is the percentage loss. For example, AssociatedContent.com was found to have 216,419 top rankings before the change, which dropped to 53,512 rankings after — a loss of 162,917, or 75%.
| Domain | Positions Lost | % Loss |
| associatedcontent.com | 162,917 | 75% |
| suite101.com | 141,469 | 79% |
| ezinearticles.com | 130,231 | 71% |
| hubpages.com | 102,820 | 67% |
| buzzle.com | 62,049 | 72% |
| merchantcircle.com | 58,666 | 63% |
| wisegeek.com | 52,084 | 70% |
| articlesbase.com | 50,909 | 62% |
| findarticles.com | 44,621 | 69% |
| answerbag.com | 41,260 | 61% |
| examiner.com | 39,509 | 56% |
| manta.com | 36,945 | 48% |
| freedownloadscenter.com | 34,494 | 81% |
| yourdictionary.com | 32,981 | 67% |
| lovetoknow.com | 31,711 | 64% |
| trails.com | 29,835 | 78% |
| thefind.com | 29,011 | 39% |
| travelpod.com | 28,513 | 68% |
| brothersoft.com | 27,594 | 40% |
| docstoc.com | 26,650 | 56% |
| fixya.com | 25,867 | 42% |
| howtodothings.com | 25,621 | 77% |
| mahalo.com | 24,135 | 71% |
| insiderpages.com | 23,346 | 70% |
| faqs.org | 22,506 | 67% |
| prlog.org | 22,254 | 57% |
| kaboodle.com | 21,949 | 39% |
| citytowninfo.com | 21,615 | 86% |
| shopwiki.com | 21,528 | 43% |
| roadsideamerica.com | 21,510 | 73% |
| buzzillions.com | 21,421 | 48% |
| tradekey.com | 21,096 | 56% |
| essortment.com | 20,042 | 73% |
| uptake.com | 19,655 | 58% |
| encyclopedia.com | 19,625 | 51% |
| helium.com | 18,931 | 66% |
| wordiq.com | 18,877 | 77% |
| springerlink.com | 18,625 | 49% |
| livestrong.com | 18,175 | 38% |
| business.com | 16,743 | 78% |
| doityourself.com | 16,386 | 70% |
| americantowns.com | 16,201 | 62% |
| prnewswire.com | 15,162 | 70% |
| cinemablend.com | 14,259 | 72% |
| epodunk.com | 14,190 | 78% |
| vodpod.com | 13,766 | 38% |
| labnol.org | 13,541 | 85% |
| medicalnewstoday.com | 13,426 | 75% |
| mytravelguide.com | 13,340 | 69% |
| highbeam.com | 13,324 | 34% |
| blogcritics.org | 13,312 | 57% |
| chacha.com | 12,900 | 48% |
| retrevo.com | 12,601 | 35% |
| sharewareconnection.com | 12,600 | 54% |
| planetware.com | 12,387 | 75% |
| ptf.com | 12,380 | 41% |
| digitaltrends.com | 12,154 | 67% |
| testfreaks.com | 11,938 | 63% |
| galttech.com | 11,804 | 76% |
| aceshowbiz.com | 11,639 | 67% |
| userinstinct.com | 11,410 | 47% |
| viewpoints.com | 11,191 | 55% |
| destination360.com | 11,167 | 76% |
| topshareware.com | 11,000 | 48% |
| consumeraffairs.com | 10,832 | 80% |
| onsugar.com | 10,699 | 40% |
| stateuniversity.com | 10,560 | 70% |
| allbusiness.com | 10,423 | 63% |
| blurtit.com | 10,331 | 47% |
| everything2.com | 10,298 | 76% |
| kioskea.net | 9,781 | 32% |
| travelpost.com | 9,412 | 75% |
| wrongdiagnosis.com | 9,293 | 52% |
| technorati.com | 9,135 | 67% |
| whosdatedwho.com | 8,986 | 58% |
| entrepreneur.com | 8,974 | 75% |
| slideshare.net | 8,909 | 27% |
| geek.com | 8,632 | 65% |
| gizmag.com | 8,594 | 46% |
| mp3.com | 8,577 | 64% |
| trendhunter.com | 8,539 | 66% |
| fotosearch.com | 8,473 | 48% |
| daniweb.com | 8,316 | 61% |
| iloveindia.com | 8,240 | 58% |
| eventful.com | 7,948 | 55% |
| globalsources.com | 7,927 | 34% |
| songkick.com | 7,908 | 50% |
| eggheadcafe.com | 7,828 | 47% |
| ubergizmo.com | 7,807 | 73% |
| ez-tracks.com | 7,779 | 62% |
| popcrunch.com | 7,728 | 63% |
| ghacks.net | 7,695 | 78% |
| healthcentral.com | 7,660 | 59% |
| 5min.com | 7,652 | 62% |
| famouswhy.com | 7,619 | 63% |
| fanpix.net | 7,445 | 64% |
| ilike.com | 7,401 | 62% |
| torrentreactor.net | 7,252 | 29% |
| bellaonline.com | 7,171 | 69% |
| hotel-rates.com | 7,124 | 67% |
From Danny Sullivan’s article Number Crunchers: Who Lost In Google’s “Farmer” Algorithm Change?