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Google Introduces New Search Algorithm, Aimed at Burying Low-Quality Results

by Amar Toor on February 25, 2011 at 09:00 AM

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Lately, Google's been taking a lot of heat for the suddenly nebulous quality and reliability of its search results. In response, the company reaffirmed its commitment to enhance its search mechanisms, and rolled out a handful of small and subtle changes. Yesterday, however, Google announced that it's making a "big algorithmic change" -- one that its users will actually be able to notice.

The update, which reportedly affects 11.8-percent of all queries, is designed to prioritize high-quality results, while reducing rankings for low-quality sites. In other words, your Google searches will now turn up more original, in-depth results and less content-farm runoff.

Although the new algorithm isn't directly linked to Google's new Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, the company did compare data from the Blocklist with sites that its updated feature demoted. And, according to Google's Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts, the algorithm compared pretty favorably. "If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them," Singhal and Cutts explained. "which is strong independent confirmation of the user benefits."

The revamped algorithm is already being used on searches conducted from the U.S., although Google plans on rolling it out to other locations in the near future.

Tags: algorithm, ContentFarms, google, quality, results, search, SearchEngines, top, Web

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