Undisclosed reports have been reported than a, “phantom” algorithm update that has been rolled out in Google search which is primarily impacting publishers of “how-to” style content.
HubPages, has a collection of more than 870,000 miniblogs which contain informational content about a large varieties of topics, saw its Google search traffic drop 22 percent from one week to another on May 3.
Other websites like eHow, WikiHow, and Answers.com are have seen significant drops in traffic over the past couple of weeks.
Through analyzing the data, many experts have determined that this update is not related to Panda or Penguin. However, similar types of “thin” content targeted by Panda are also being targeted by this update.
Howevere clickbait articles, sites with an abundance supplementary information, pages of stacked videos, and pages difficult to navigate have all lost visibility in recent weeks.
This update is said to be “ruthless” in its approach — apparently having no problem punishing entire domains for a few instances of thin content.
Google has not formally commented on this update, although Gary Illyes of Google’s Webmaster Trends team, alluded to there being a recent change that’s part of a core algorithm update.
With Google’s Knowledge Graph being notorious for detracting traffic from sites for “how to” searches, coupled with this “Phantom” update, being a content publisher is more challenging than ever.
With these updates no one is able to predict what business will look like tomorrow, next week, next month, etc.
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