Google updates its search algorithm to reduce webspam levels
From: http://topnews.us/content/233612-google-updates-its-search-algorithm-reduce-webspam-levels
Submitted by John Davidson on Sun, 01/30/2011 – 07:27
In responseto the increased criticism about Google and its low-quality search results, the Internet search giant this week updated its search algorithm in an attempt to bring down the level of webspam in its search results. While traditional webspam comprises chiefly of pages that contained a horde ofkeywords and phrases without context – implying that they intended to “cheat” their way up to higher search ranks -, there are now complaints galore that newer forms of webspam are also emerging.
Defending Google and its reportedly increased spaminess, the company’s principal engineer and search quality lead Matt Cutts said in a blog post: “According to the evaluation metrics that we’ve refined over more than a decade, Google’s search quality is better than it has ever been in terms of relevance, freshness and comprehensiveness.”
Cutts further added that the level of English-language spam in Google’s results presently is less than half of its level five years back; and that the spam level in most of the other languages is notably lower than that in English. Nonetheless, acknowledging a “slight uptick” in spam of late, Cutts said that Google was “evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower.” Later, in another post on his personal blog, Cutts announced that one particular change that affects sites which copy others’ content and sites that feature low levels of original content, has already gone live earlier in the week.
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