Google says that with such a major change made in the algorithm, it is inevitable that the rankings of many sites will be affected. In other words, some will go up and some down. However, the company has not named specific sites that would be directly at the receiving end of the made change. Matt Cutts, Google spam fighting team's leader, when asked by Danny Sullivan from searchengineland, answered, I think people will get the idea of the types of sites were talking about.

Any feedback or information gathered through the Personal Blocklist extension of the Google Chrome browser which was recently launched, has not been used while making this search algorithm change, says Google. However, they have compared the Personal Blocklist gathered information with the sites identified by the new algorithm, and found that 84% of the sites blocked via Chrome extension (Personal Blocklist) were identified by the new algorithm.

Although Google has not given names of the sites that are supposedly going down with the effect of this new ranking algorithm change, it seems quite clear with a little contemplation. The company had earlier announced in January that they will focus on content farms in 2011, and made content farm focused algorithmic changes following the announcement. Hence, content farms that has less original content or those that copy others content, are the sites that are being focused on.

Now, sites such as Demand Media, Associated Content and Mahalo etc., that are labeled as content farms come to mind. How will their rankings be impacted with the change in force? To such speculations, Demand Media is defending itself saying that its sites, such as eHow, has high quality content. Well, as to who gets affected by the change or will the latest change really improve Google's ranking quality? Time will tell, as this change that has been put in to action in the US (as of now) gets rolled out in other parts of the world.