Home Wealth Project

[Added]Google’s “Farmer” Update was a major restructuring of their search index that was released to the US public sometime around March 1st. It was designed to show higher quality results by punishing sites that detract from the user experience (because the ads are obtrusive, the content is thin, the site loads slowly, users tend to “bounce” off the site quickly, etc). The average search user typically is not aware that a major Google Update has occurred. [/Added]

Before I start this article let me make one thing very clear. In the grand scheme of things, I’ve always respected Google’s commitment to a quality index. They have made huge strides over the years to reward quality and destroy junk. And I like that. A lot. It has made the web a better place. So while there is an emerging cottage industry of Google complainers, I have no intention of joining their ranks. Because at the end of the day I believe that Google’s entire business model depends on having the best search results. So yeah, I trust Google.

The purpose of this article is to point out some concrete ways in which the latest Google update named “Farmer” has had negative effects for small businesses and their brands. Admittedly, I am going to be a bit myopic and use one of my own websites as a case study. But the purpose is to draw attention to an obvious flaw in the update and how it reflects badly upon Google.

Like it or not, a lot of small businesses live or die based on their brands. The editors at a popular website that I own called PopCrunch recognized about 3-4 years back that in the entertainment space, the site needed to “differentiate or die.” So we took two approaches to differentiation. First, we created an online tv show that was featured on YouTube. That project, while a blast to put together and a fan favorite, simply couldn’t survive because of the economics of web video. We couldn’t monetize it. I’d love to bring the show back someday, but doing so would require a major long-term sponsor.

The other approach to differentiation was to create premium content that other people weren’t making (you can see a list of our premium content here). What we ended up doing was creating annual lists that took 100+ hours worth of man power to accomplish. The idea was this: all the publishers out there are throwing out short 200 word news articles. Let’s be better. Let’s contribute to the web and make unique content that’s fun but requires hard work. The kind of work not everyone is willing to do.

So we put the hard work in. And we built some popular brands. Some so popular, that they get mentioned on radio stations across the country and drive millions of unique visitors in a single day. Examples include: 100 Hottest Women of 2011. The Hottest Women in Radio. Hottest Student Bodies of 2010.

Yeah, yeah it’s not like we’re contributing to the intellectual stores of humanity with this content. But we are making stuff that people like. And we’re putting the hard work in to make it as high quality as we can within a small brand’s budget.

So what’s the big deal with Google’s Farmer Update? Well, like I said, we often get radio mentions of our content (because it’s THAT good) and with Google’s Farmer update, people searching the titles of many of our best articles (search any of the titles here) will have a hard time finding the original source. Instead of getting the original PopCrunch article, they’ll be sent to sites that copied PopCrunch’s article or simply linked to it.

Here’s a search you can do to see what I mean: 100 Hottest Women of 2011

Showing above PopCrunch are scraper sites like InnewsToday.net , CastNews.us, Newmoviereleasesdvd.Loginby.com and Social Link Sites like Populnks.com, Topix.com, Digg.com, etc.

So imagine this situation. Radio Station X spends ten minutes talking about our list of the 100 Hottest Women of 20011. A slew of listeners go to Google, whom they implicitly trust and search for 100 Hottest Women of 2011 and what do you know, Google fails to show them what they were looking for.

We have already been told by a few of our contacts in the radio industry that they’ve had listeners calling into the station because they can’t find the article that the morning DJ’s were talking about. That’s not just PopCrunch’s problem. It’s Google’s problem too.

And it’s not just an isolated case. I’ve talked with dozens of small brand owners who run legitimate, defensible, differentiated websites who have seen very similar results.

So the moral of the story is that Google’s brand depends on returning the results that people expect to get. And I expect that it’s not just in my interest, but in Google’s interest as well to fix the issue I’ve defined as soon as they can.

In the meantime, we’ll keep producing the best content we can and strive to get even better. It’s the waiting on a giant that’s the tough part.

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