While slightly different in nature in how it’s being implemented, Google’s latest algorithmic update is following the same theme of its Penguin and Panda updates, which basically rewards sites that create the best, most informative content.
Websites with poor content (i.e. stuffed with keywords) on the other hand are penalized and removed from the search results. Over the last year, numerous websites have seen rankings, and by extension revenues, dramatically drop due to poor content. These updates have led many firms to lay off employees or otherwise dramatically scale back their operations.
This latest update goes after websites engaging in outright plagiarism – the methodology though is slightly different in that Google is removing sites where legitimate copyright violation notices have been served.
Essentially, Google receives a copyright violation notice from copyright owners or reporting organization that represent the original owner of the content.
What’s different is that Google doesn’t decide what constitutes a copyright infringement, a court does. Google’s only role is to remove pages that have a valid copyright removal notice that’s approved by the appropriate legal authorities.
According to this report from Hubspot, Google now receives more copyright infringement notices each day than it did in all of 2009…the search giant has received and processed over 4.3 million such requests just in the last 30 days.
The search algorithm evaluates the number of such requests for a particular site. Those with a lot of infringements are pushed lower in the search results, generally off page 1. In a statement on the update, Google says its goal, as always, is to “help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily.”
Unless you’re outright stealing content from other sites, you shouldn’t have to worry about being affected by this update. However, you may have competitors who don’t really understand how the Internet works and submit copyright infringement notices claiming you’ve stolen their original work.
The reality is they can file as many notices as they want to…Google is only acting on notices that have proven in a court of law. But even if a court has deemed your content violates copyright laws, Google still provides tools for those who feel they’ve been wrongly accused and convicted.
Even if you’ve been diligent in giving credit where credit is due, this is a good opportunity to review your methods of citing sources and make adjustments.
Google is certainly paying closer attention to a site’s content, and has been for quite awhile now. Make sure you’re developing unique content that provides information and value to your readers.
At the same time, make sure you provide proper credit to any outside sources you use. To learn more about proper citation, check out this article from Hubspot for more or check back with us again soon.
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