With so many rumors circling about what Google’s algorithm really changed, who they were going after, and how it affects us, we thought it would be important to let you hear exactly what Google’s saying about it.
This article mentions a “pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking – a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries.”
The goal is to reduce rankings for low-quality (not useful or copy content) sites, along with providing better rankings for high-quality (original and thoughtful content) sites.
They also make it clear that this update does not take into account the feedback they have received from users who have black-listed their own results through Chrome’s Personal Blocklist extension. But that they did compare the preferences, and note that their algorithmic change addresses 84% of the top several dozen blocked domains.