Recently the algorithm was changed to give Internet searchers more relevant answers to their queries. What this means for you is that if you have a website of high quality, your site will be rewarded; just the opposite for others that don’t offer quality information, your rankings will decrease. Here is what the Google algorithm will weed out as the good and the bad: “sites which are low-value add for users, 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.” A week prior to this alrogithm change, Google released a Chrome Browser Extension that gives Internet users the option to Blocklist certain sites according to the pattern of their searches. This action will then send the information to Google for your chosen search patterns along with the URL of the web pages blocked. When Google ran tests, and compared its algorithmic data with the patterns data retrieved from the searchers desired block lists, the engineers were please when it showed that the improved algorithm addressed 84% of the sites listed by users, which is a strong independent confirmation of the user benefit. Will Your Blog be Affected by Google’s Algorithm Change? Because Google states that it will weed out those sites that copy others… will our blogs be thrown into the lions den along with other low-quality sites? We as bloggers make a conscience decision to syndicate materials that we find hold value for our readers, and as such we copy parts of the materials written by others, tell our followers about this amazing content we found, then include a link back to the source. Does this make it grounds to mark our sites as shallow, or worse yet, plagiarists because we copy someone else’s valued content to syndicate it to others through our site? If my interpretation is correct, it sounds to me like Google is wanting us to take the little extra time needed to create duplicate-free content, by rewriting the materials in our own words, then sending our readers on to the original article. Closing Comments About the Google Algorithm Change! To a certain degree, I can understand where Google is coming from. I have found portions (usually a sentence) of my articles on other websites, with an inbound link leading to my site. With many site owners out there making an attempt to fool the search engines into increasing their rankings by copying a sentence of a person’s article, and leaving a to the original content, I can see why Google is cracking down. These sites hold little value because all it offers is a bunch of sentences with a link. Many Internet users may like these types of sites, but Google has researched and found the opposite is true. Google has a responsibility to give searchers the quality that they seek, so they will continue to tweak its algorithm to do just that. If you would like to read more about the Google algorithm change, with its mission to seek out higher-quality sites for the Internet searcher, please visit Google’s Official Blog.