Ezinearticles just published information at their blog in an apparently knee-jerk reaction to Google’s recent algorithm change… they’re going to add nofollow to all article links, even the bio-box!
Let’s back up a little. EzineArticles (EZA) are one of the oldest article directories. Authors favour EZA submissions as they are quickly spidered, indexed and a good source of traffic and backlinks.
Recently Google announced a slap for “content farms” which they say only “noticably” impacts 11.8% of their USA search results, yet traffic to EZA dropped like a rock (“Last month, we served 57 million unique visitors. Next month, that number may be in half.”). OUCH
Within TWO DAYS of the google announcement, Chris Knight, CEO of EZA announced a plan of action which, unsurprisingly, includes rejecting a higher percentage of articles, considering raising the minimum word count of articles, targetting “advertorials” etc. But the two interesting changes, to my mind, are…
“…evaluating ways to reduce the number of ads per page to improve the perceived user experience“.
Yes, that’d made sense because there’s nothing like five different Adsense blocks and extra, unidentified, “sponsored results” blocks to make a page look spammy!
“The rel=”NOFOLLOW” attribute will be added to all links on all articles very soon.”
What a peach! Did someone at Google lean heavily on EZA? Surely two days isn’t enough time to evaluate potential changes to your system unless you already know the change that need to be made.
In reply to people querying the reason for adding “nofollow”, Chris said…
“My gut feeling is that those links have carried no real value in at least 2-3 years now. I have no data to back it up. I do however know of plenty of competitor websites that have implemented nofollow already.”
Hmm. No data to back it up, yet his “gut feeling” is that the links have been worthless for years? OK. That wouldn’t be a cover for being leaned on to implement “nofollow”, would it, Chris? The fact that other directories have implemented “nofollow” does NOT mean that webmasters don’t like dofollow links, it means that either they were also leaned on, or they saw the writing on the wall and used nofollow to avoid getting Google slapped!
I would hazard a guess that Google probably suggested using “nofollow” way back in time, only for EZA to say that editorial checking of articles would be enough to keep out low quality content. But now Google have laid down the law, and EZA is going to comply. Sorry, chaps, no linkjuice here anymore.
As the linkjuice from EZA dies, the <strike>article marketers</strike> “content farms” lose juice and their Google rankings tumble, which was always the name of the game for Google.
Here’s what EZA said about nofollow when it was rolled out in 2005…
“We’re strongly considering using this new attribute…not only for the EzineArticles BLOG, but for the BODY of the articles within our site.
We will not use this technology for the RESOURCE BOX (as that is considered payment to the author for sending us their content), but we are strongly considering adding the rel=”nofollow” tag to ALL URLs within the BODY of any article.”
Times change, eh? So much for “payment” for the authors.
(note: links to EZA have been nofollowed on principle)
7:30AM CST this morning, after reading dozens of comments from our members overnight and thinking more about this issue, the NOFOLLOW rel attribute change being considered was *removed* from the short list of actions (it was already near the bottom of the checklist) to be taken this week.
Several convincing arguments were made that showed it wasn’t the main issue at hand and therefore we’ve got bigger challenges to overcome.
End result: Your Resource Box links will continue to be DOFOLLOW links.
Can we guarantee this forever? No. The Internet changes every single day. The value proposition changes also. Back in 2005, we weren’t delivering 100k+ clicks a day for free to our members’ websites.
thanks for updating us, Chris.
Back in 2005, you didn’t have thousands of authors contributing enough content to EZA to allow you to build a new building…
It’ll be interesting to see who/where becomes the top place from which authors get their most valuable links. I expect there’ll be a lot of shuffling about for the next few weeks. Or perhaps it will become a totally less predictable market.
Well, that sounds like I have a reason to republish sixty of my original articles on websites that actually matter. I haven’t bothered with writing for Ezine in the last year, but this is a total slap in the face and there’s no way I’m going to let them use my uniquely written content with absolutely no reciprocation.
Ahhh I wish I had clicked through the link first, he’s now got a bold update to the blog post:
Actually, if they enact higher quality control standards and leave the links real, I would be even more interested in using their service again.
Except they changed their minds as you were writing!
“Updated 7:30am CST Sunday: I’m less certain this move will change anything, so for the sake of this discussion, let’s remove it from the table. I will comment further below.”
I think if they did go ahead they would have shot themselves in the foot. I can’t imagine I would continue to write for them if they stopped paying me…
I’m having mixed feelings. Of course I have used article marketing for link juice but I know my competitors have too. Hopefully my rankings won’t be hurt by this any more than the competition.
Am I going crazy or content links have always had the nofollow tag on EZA? So what is all this about?
Links in the article were nofollowed. Links in the author credit were not.
Nice article. Fortunately for me I have not used EzineArticles that much. Instead I have put most of my strength on getting backlinks from different websites and blogs manually. For all webmasters who have put their strength on article directories, your efforts are not for nothing, but consider looking for alternatives.
//Alexander.
It will be very messed up if they go nofollow on their Resource Box links. I applaud their move to become more editorially relevant, but they shouldn’t attack the authors ‘payment’ just because they lost search rankings. Ezine did not lose page rank or other indicator signals which tells me the update was largely based on content, not on the linking.
If you drop by their blog, you’ll see they pretty quickly dropped the idea of “no follow” once they got a storm of reaction from EZA writers.
It is officially “off the table”.
I was starting to suspect that Ezinearticles.com was taking the authors for granted but guess this pretty much proves it. No “payment” to the authors for submitting original content thus giving Ezinearticles.com a reason and substance to exist. No sweat though, there are other quality article directories not to mention web2.0 sites to submit content to.
Just watch – If EzineArticles pulls the plug on the resource box follow links, the number of articles to EZA will dry up and they become just another article directory…
Too bad.