A small tweak here . . . and a 28 percent plummet there. Yeah, that’s right – Google adjusted its algorithm, and according to Answers.com itself, traffic to the Answers “information portal” has dropped dramatically as a result.
Answers.com CEO Bob Rosenschein seems to realize just how bad this looks. “We are working diligently to analyze and address the recent algorithm change,” he stated in a press release. “We will update investors on the financial impact of this development during our upcoming Q2 earnings conference call on August 13.”
Rosenschein then returns to happier days by speaking of the Dictionary.com deal. When the deal was first announced, the CEO believed that upwards of 70 percent of Answers.com’s traffic would “be direct from end users or people searching specifically for the term ‘dictionary’ in search engines,” and he’s sticking to his statistical guns. So not all is lost.
But . . . yeesh, 28 percent of it is, at least temporarily, and that’s hard to get past. Industry analysts like Leo Blanco and Zack Miller have covered the story, but Reuters and the Associated Press are also taking note.
Well, trust a corporate press release (and a CEO) to see the silver lining – Rosenschein says, “This change only demonstrates the sound business rationale behind our agreement to purchase Dictionary.com, because it underscores a primary motivation for the deal: to secure a steady source of direct traffic and mitigate our current dependence on search engine algorithms.”
