They have implemented some changes in an effort to retain some of the better writers that have contributed there in the past. I still feel that they are missing the mark with creating a solid model for constantly increasing the quality of the content on their website. Tightening existing controls is not the ultimate answer. They will drive away more people who are writing good content. The people publishing the low quality content will continue to do so. It seems so obvious to me that I just don’t understand their line of thinking about this.

I think the changes will have a long term positive effect on EzineArticles.com. The damage has been so severe though that it will probably take years for them to get back to the revenue level they were at.

I don’t think those autobloggers should be counting their chickens too soon. I wouldn’t doubt if they wake up one morning soon to find that they have been hit. They are stupid for talking about it at all. Just like stupid criminals who brag about their crimes, they will get caught. Someone is listening.

Believe it or not this might actually open up more of an opportunity for Adsense bloggers. They won’t have as much competition for that low hanging long tail fruit.
We shall see.

Nice post on your site there.

You’re right about freelancing and unique content being a solid business these days. I just got out of freelancing last month to work my passive income entirely, thankfully it’s all still peaches and cream.

The algo change seems to have a funny thread at the Warrior Forum, I forget where – but the autobloggers there are saying they’ve had a boost from it…too funny. Or not.

So: Ezine is out but crummy autoblogs are still ranking? Not sure what niches, or if it matters – but the overall tenor of the thread is that these autobloggers, if niche-specific, are doing just fine.

Incredible. I think it’s a big PR piece for Google, especially taking heat from the NY Times piece on JC Penney scamming links and ranking just fine – Google’s facing irrelevance if they don’t do things like this to plume their feathers.

I haven’t been hit yet – but then again…I stubbornly believe you should actually WRITE before PUBLISHING….I’m weird that way.

Good to see you back!

Do you have any idea why the comment luv doesn’t work for me here? Is it on my end?

You commented about not getting articles approved on there. That is one of my main beefs with their review process. I hear from a lot of people that they get good articles rejected for something stupid. Some people can publish a handful of articles that get approved and they instantly earn platinum status as an author. Then others can submit excellent quality material and get it rejected for something ridiculous like using the words “my blog” inside their article.

It’s their site. So, they can be utra-picky if they want to. Still, you aren’t going to retain the best writers when you insult them by telling them that the article they just spent the last hour writing is not up to their standards. It would not be insulting if they did not allow low quality crap on there. But, it is insulting because they allow spam to get on there while repeatedly rejecting material from professional writers.

Welcome back and I look forward to hearing more from you,
Julie

I completely agree with you in regards of social media. Though the general traffic may be similar to search engines or even bigger, they considerably lose in regards of “target” traffic (as people who get to your blog were not preliminary interested in the stuff your offer) which in its turn results in less page views and less money. And still social media require much more commitment and time, you should work 24/7 for really vague results.

I am a newbie blogger and I am planning to launch a business by myself and I thought it will be an easy transition. But now I realized its going to be a really hard one. Whatever, I am ambitious man and I love to accept challenges. Lets see how hard this transition going to be?

Anyways, Thanks for writing an useful article.

Sathish

SEO’s nature is to raise the noise floor for any given search result. The worst offenders are the link farms and unethical splogs, comment spammers, etc.

A semantic search method (e.g., Hunch.com is a very early attempt at this) is a solution to provide more meaningful results. Bookmarking is also a good way (along with your suggestion to use CommentLuv).

Are you aware of any changes to the Google algorithm to favor more organic links?

Google uses linear and statistical algorithms to generate search results. These are probably inferior to an adaptive heuristic approach — but all of this is speculation.

Have you found any research to support your theories about building links through comments?

Many thanks. And I do love your blog (now bookmarked).

You say that each new post/page you create on a website starts with “power” just from being created? I thought that this “power” comes from external and/or internal links pointing to that page…