“We think it’s time to call this company out! The news publishing industry is in a state of Crisis. Google and Facebook have ‘sucked’ all the money out of news.”
-Spokesman for the Daily Mail Group.
Daily Mail are claiming that Google Search algorithm have been manipulated to show less articles from businesses that ‘don’t play ball’ with Google Advertising.
As an SEO expert listening to an interview about this topic this morning all I can say is the representatives of the Daily Mail do not appear to understand how Google works. They also seem to think they have a God Given right to automatically appear at the top news searches and are angry their recent Royal based news only received 1-2% of UK traffic from the Search Engine.
The Daily Mail Group seem to completely miss the idea of ‘Quality Score’ and ‘Spam Scores’. Google are a private company that have systems in place to show what they believe are the most ‘relevant’ search results, not the most ‘popular’ search results.
I really don’t understand how a company the size of the Daily Mail Group cannot understand this! They seem to be complaining that algorithm changes made last year had a hit on their traffic.
Yes, very likely.
I’ve seen companies as diverse as BMW, Twitter and eBay being hit by similar changes. From experience this happens when companies think they have got ‘too big’ to worry about the guidelines and think they can fudge the rules. Be it adding hidden text about competitors’ products to their sites, filling Meta descriptions with search terms or use ‘spammy’ advertiser’s links.
If the Daily Mail want to see their traffic improve, I can help them instantly. Stop advertising with spammy/shady 3rd party adverts!
If their articles continue to feature Ads at the bottom about a ‘Simple weight loss trick Doctors don’t want you to know’ or ‘A single London based Mum receives £10’000 windfall’ – find out how’. They should not be surprised if their search traffic continues to fall.
