Google Farmer Algorithm Change - Who is Suffering?

Yesterday, I discussed the recent change to Google's algorithm that went live almost two weeks ago in an attempt to prevent content farms from appearing high up in the SERPs. There has been a lot of commotion since the update as many sites, including some that are not considered to be content farms, have seen a dramatic decrease in web traffic. Recently, Sistrix released statistics on a number of search queries that they maintained data for prior to and following the algorithm change to demonstrate who suffered the most from Google's most recent effort to improve their search results.

At the time of Google's announcement that the change went live, the search engine had expected that 12% of its results would be altered. And some of these statistics are reassuring in the sense that many content farms have taken a drastic hit from a keyword rankings perspective. Consider the following ten sites, according to Sistrix, that saw the biggest drop in keyword positions since February 24th:

1. www.transitionsabroad.com 88%
2. www.citytowninfo.com 86%
3. www.labnol.org 85%
4. www.thedailygreen 83%
5. www.webreference.com 83%
6. www.daviddarling.info 83%
7. www.referenceforbusiness.com 83%
8. www.webdevelopernotes.com 81%
9. www.1000ventures.com 81%
10. www.freedownloadcenter.com 81%

Unfortunately, as with any change in algorithm, the results have not been perfect. I previously mentioned that many sites were suffering from the change that did not necessarily deserve to. Furthermore, there are existing sites that many would consider to be content farms that did not suffer as much as they should have. For example, eHow.com, which returns a lot of low quality and often times incorrect information at the top of the SERPs, actually saw a boost in rankings over the last two weeks.

Google recently stated that while the algorithm change has caused issues for some webmasters, they have not, and are not planning on making any manual changes to the SERPs to account for them. According to the search engine, there have been minor adjustments to the farmer's update, but these adjustments are considered normal to their ever-changing algorithm. For webmasters of unique, quality sites who are looking to resolve their recent problems, Google has suggested contacting them throughWebmaster Central. According to Google fellow Amit Singhal, the reconsideration request form seems to be the most effective way to do so once you are signed in.