Acknowledging recent criticism that the perceived quality of its search has gone down, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Principal Engineer and lead voice on search-quality issues Matt Cutts wrote a post last Friday vowing to address a "slight uptick of spam in recent months."  While Cutts argued that Google has made significant progress in eliminating sites featuring "pure webspam," he also admitted that the problem has shifted to sites that either attempt to copy content wholesale (aggregation sites and automated blogs), or those that feature low levels of original content (content farms).

Because of these reasons, Google will be stepping up efforts against the phenomena known as "search spam." Separately, Cutts also told CNET News that Google plans to modify its search algorithms to identify sites that are clearly content scrapers, which are sites that copy content wholesale onto their own sites.

For obvious reasons, observers are asking whether companies such as Demand Media, which churn out vast amount of content that uses SEO techniques to score better than articles of similar or even higher quality, will be affected. In addition, many news sites also practice republishing relevant content on affiliated sites, and it is unclear how if the changes will penalize them as well.

"We take pride in Google search and strive to make each and every search perfect," wrote Cutts on the company blog. He added, "Please tell us how we can do a better job, and we'll continue to work towards a better Google."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at PC World
- check out this article at Official Google Blog
- check out this article at CNET News
- check out this article at Search Engine Roundtable

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