Scraper filter (2011): Google's change against copied content

What Google changed#

On 21 January 2011, Matt Cutts wrote on the Official Google Blog that Google was evaluating several anti-spam changes, “including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.”

A week later, on his personal blog, Cutts confirmed that the change had launched. The intended result, he wrote, was that “searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.” He thanked Jeff Atwood and the Stack Overflow team for feedback on the problem.

Google never named the change. Scraper filter is a label the SEO industry adopted. Moz’s algorithm update history lists the same change as the Attribution update.

When it rolled out#

Cutts’s post of Friday 28 January 2011 said the change “was approved at our weekly quality launch meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week.” Google did not give the exact day, so this page dates it to 28 January 2011, the first confirmed date; the real launch was a few days earlier. The Next Web reported the confirmation the same day. No completion date was stated.

What is known about its impact#

Google’s only figures came from Cutts: “slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice.” He called it “a pretty targeted launch.” Google published no site-level figures.

What site owners should do#

Google still acts against copied content, though not under this name. Its spam policies define scraping as taking content from other sites, often through automated means, to manipulate rankings. Its ranking systems guide describes original content systems that aim to show original content prominently, ahead of pages that merely cite it.

• Publish original content and add value when you draw on other sources.
• Do not republish feeds or copied pages with only light changes, such as swapped synonyms.
• Use canonical markup when your content is legitimately syndicated, so Google can identify the primary page.

How to check whether it affected you#

This is historical. Search Console keeps 16 months of data, so January 2011 can only be checked in archived analytics, by comparing Google organic traffic for the weeks either side of 24 January 2011. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every update with its dates.

Related updates#

• The merchant reviews update was the previous announced change, in December 2010.
• The Panda update followed on 24 February 2011 with a broader attack on low-quality sites.