When Google declared it had re-engineered its search formula two weeks ago, the spotlight was understandably on the likely losers.
The main problem, after all, was the proliferation of Web sites designed less for readers than as bait for search-generated traffic — and thus ad revenue. A lot of their articles are copied from elsewhere or hastily written and filled with popular search terms. “Weed Out Drivel” was the money phrase in the headline on The Times’s article.
And the early analysis done by independent firms, like Sistrix, a search consultant, tallied sites that had seen their traffic plunge.
Now it’s time to talk about the winners. In its blog post declaring the change, Google used a glass-half-full headline, “Finding more high-quality sites in search.” It turns out that the algorithm overhaul has achieved that goal, according to Outbrain, a recommendation service used by many large news sites on the Web.
The start-up’s service — a widget that places links at the bottom of online articles to other news stories that readers might find interesting — appears on more than 90 sites. They include USA Today, The Daily Beast and Newsweek, Slate, iVillage, Slate and The Boston Globe (which The New York Times Company owns).
Outbrain measured traffic from search in the two weeks before Google made its change, and then for a week after, and compared the rates. The result: a 48 percent increase in search-generated traffic.
Outbrain’s service appears on Web pages that are viewed about two billion times a month, so the statistical sample is pretty rich. And the jump in traffic was evident in virtually all the 90 sites that use its service and across all subject categories, said David Sasson, chief operating officer of Outbrain.
Traffic to technology articles increased 74 percent, finance topics rose 42 percent, and news up 36 percent. A big jump in the traffic to entertainment pages, up 126 percent, he noted, could well be inflated by the Charlie Sheen interviews and the Oscar awards in the first week that Google’s new algorithm was in place.
“We were surprised to see how big the increase was,” Mr. Sasson said. “However Google changed its algorithm, the change is really benefiting the sites that produce a lot of original content.”
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