In its attempt to target low quality "content farms" websites, Google has announced a major algorithmic change to its search engine.
The change will be implemented first in the US and targeted to identify and demote websites that load irrelevant data through practices such as Black Hat.
Content farms work to attract search traffic by loading websites with irrelevant content, by either raising large amounts of low-quality content or by copying it from other websites.
Google has said that the change, that is expected to impact 11.8% of Google’s queries, will affect the ranking of many sites on the Web.
Googlers Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts wrote in a blog that the update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites.
They wrote, "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."
