Google’s Content Farm’ Update Costs Mahalo Employees Their Jobs

If you’ve been reading any of the search engine news portals over the last week or so, you’ll know that Google’s latest update has led to a fairly major shift in certain search results. Where before, many results featured article directories such as Ezines, now those sites are all but gone and the focus instead is on quality content. At least, that was the idea.

One of the sites hit hardest by the ‘content farm’ update is former Google competitor Mahalo; a human-edited content search engine which, although being a good resource for search engine optimised links and content, always seems to at least try to give some useful information on its landing pages and functions more like a “question and answer” engine than the typical directories we’re all used to seeing in our SERPS. Due to the dramatic dip in the site’s traffic, Mahalo announced today that they will be making 10% of their staff redundant.

I’m in two minds about this: firstly, it’s nice to see that there are clearer search engine results out there and it’s always good to know that I won’t be battling it out with some poorly written article on Ezines for search positions. By the same token, I hate to see anyone lose their job and although Mahalo’s content did scrape the barrel sometimes, I probably wouldn’t put most of it in the same boat as some of the other content farms out there.

The latest Google update is like any other – it’s had wins and it’s had losses. Hopefully subsequent updates will clear the results even more and reward those sites that actually do have relevant, original content and not penalise the wrong people.

What do you think? Has this update been good for your search experience, has it ruined your day or is it all a mountain out of a molehill? Leave me a comment and let me know.