Google Defends Itself Over SEO Accusations
Google has begun defending itself from accusations from SEO specialists that it is deliberately reducing the notoriety of some websites to fix their search results.
Scott Huffman told the BBC that the suggestions that Google were fixing results was “almost absurd”, after the Panda update was released to update their search engine algorithm.
The changes are expected to affect 11.8% of queries and a number of websites are already experiencing a hit. For one, ciao.co.uk, an online shopping portal that had been in the frontline of an EU competition case against Google, experienced a 94% drop in visibility after the update.
Google defended the Panda update, saying it was designed to “reduce rankings for low-quality sites.” which it defined as “sites that copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.”
“At the same time it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites – sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”
