Google Rolls Out Farmer (Panda) Globally

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 18:15:00 GMT

It has been just over a month since Google made one of the most significant changes to its algorithm in the Anti-farm Panda update which impacted nearly 12 percent of all searches.

Google is now pushing out the changes to all English languages users and finally incorporating data from user feedback signals. "In some high-confidence situations, we are beginning to incorporate data about the sites that users block into our algorithms," according to the announcement on the Webmaster Central blog.

The search giant also indicated that this change goes deeper into the “long tail” of low-quality websites where the algorithm might not have been able to make an assessment before. The impact of these new signals is smaller in scope than the original change: about 2% of U.S. queries are affected by a reasonable amount, compared with almost 12% of U.S. queries for the original change.

Death of the Ad Network?

Mike Phillips — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 01:45:00 GMT

Add The New York Times Co., Hearst, Tribune and Gannett to the list of big publishers looking to push ad networks to the fringe. Over the weekend, these companies announced they will eschew the big ad networks and instead rely on their own, private system to serve targeted online advertising. The hope, of course, is to ultimately drive up ad rates. This announcement comes right after CBS Interactive, Forbes and Weather.com announced a similar private network.

It is believed that these companies and their respective online properties will be able to better serve their advertisers and save a step in the process. Instead of advertisers bidding on ad space based on targeted parameters - regardless of the website on which the ads will appear - the same can now be done but with respect for the individual website or even down to the article level. This also gives the publishers much more control over the advertisers' data.

It's interesting to note that this announcement comes on the heels of Google's latest algorithm update, dubbed "Farmer", which seeks to downgrade low-quality websites in search results. The focus, then, is on quality content - something The New York Times and the others can all but guarantee to prospective advertisers. Ad networks have a much more difficult time making such promises.

'Net Features : farmer update

Google Rolls Out Farmer (Panda) Globally

Death of the Ad Network?