Your Google search results will soon be devoid junk websites that host low-quality content. According to a change announced by Google on Thursday, the search provider has tweaked its search formulas to weed out the junk from its results. Sites that produce original content or information that Google considers valuable are supposed to rank higher under the new system. About 12 per cent of all search requests to the Google search engine in the US will be affected by the change. The new ranking rules eventually will be introduced in other parts of the world.
The overhaul is designed to lower the rankings of what Google deems "low-quality" sites. This could be a veiled reference to sites, such as Demand Media's eHow.com, which critics call online "content farms" that is, sites producing cheap, abundant, mostly useless content that ranks high in search results.
"Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem," Google fellow Amit Singhal and principal engineer Matt Cutts wrote in a blog post. "Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that's exactly what this change does."
Google makes significant adjustments to its search formula on the same scale as the latest change four or five times a year, Singhal said in a statement on Friday.
What makes the new revisions so notable is that Google spent about a year trying to come up with a way to judge the quality of the content posted on the site.
That focus could hurt Demand Media, which depends on search engines for about 41 per cent of the traffic to its websites, with most of those referrals coming from Google, according to documents filed last month after the company completed an initial public offering of stock.
Demand Media, based in Santa Monica, assigns roughly 13,000 freelance writers to produce stories about frequently searched topics and then sells ads alongside the content at its own websites, including eHow.com and Livestrong.com, and about 375 Internet other destinations operated by its partners. Articles range from the likes of "How to Tie Shoelaces" to "How to Bake a Potato" and more.
Many of the ads appearing alongside those articles are sold by Google, which accounts for about one-fourth of Demand Media's revenue of $253 million last year.