Google is very serious about cracking down on spammy queries and websites and are proving that point with the release of their Payday Loan 3.0 algorithm.
Payday Loan 3.0 comes right on the heels of Payday Loan 2.0, which itself was only launched a few weeks back. It is, however, a very different and very specific algorithm.
Remember, Payday Loan 2.0 was focused squarely at what Google refers to as, “spammy sites.” (Not surprisingly, many of the sites targeted by Payday Loan are, indeed, payday loan sites that offer insanely high interest rates for short-term loans.) Payday Loan 2.0’s initial launch wound up impacting around 0.2% of English language queries.
Payday Loan 3.0 is, according to Matt Cutts, targeted at, “spammy queries.” Though Cutts made the announcement about the new algorithm on Twitter and at the recent SMX conference, he didn’t really go into a lot of details about what exactly his definition of, “spammy quieries,” actually entails.
Though Cutts has mentioned casino, porn and pill sites when talking about previous Payday Loan updates, the impact of the algorithm on English language igaming sites has, so far, been very limited. In this case, it seems safe to assume that the types of query Payday Loan 3.0 is targeting are mainly those associated with low quality payday loan and insurance sites.
SEO watchers have surely noted that Google has been very busy lately with three major updates over the course of just the last three weeks – Payday Loans 1&2 and Panda 4.0.
It’s also clear that Google isn’t afraid of who these updates impact. Big-time sites like eBay and Ask.com have seen significant traffic drops since Panda 4.0 rolled out. (Though Panda 4.0’s overall impact was fairly limited.)
With all the activity of late Google is definitely making a statement about who’s really in charge of the web and whose rules publishers need to play by.