Has Facebook Become The Master Key To Unlocking The Web?

When Facebook rolled out its Send button last week, I laughed. I even mocked on Twitter that Facebook wouldn’t be happy until our pages were full of buttons. But the Send button, as well as integrating other aspects of Facebook into websites, does make a lot of sense. In fact, it’s beginning to make so much sense I’ve begun to wonder if Facebook has won the battle to be the one true login.
So Many Doors, So Many Keys

For as long as I can remember on the web, there’s been talk about what a pain it is to remember a million passwords to sign in to a million different sites. Wouldn’t it be better if we had one universal “key” to open all those web doors? And wasn’t that was OpenID was supposed to be about?

Heck, Facebook even seemed to be jumping on the OpenID bandwagon back in 2009, when it said that new users could register for Facebook using Gmail accounts, which double as OpenIDs. From Facebook’s blog post at the time:

    Now, users can register for Facebook using their Gmail accounts. This is a quicker, more streamlined way for new users to register for the site, find their friends, and start exploring.

But in writing this piece, when I looked at the Facebook sign-up screen (over there on the right), I saw no option that seemed to allow this. You want a new Facebook account? You open an account directly through Facebook, seems to be the case.

(After you’ve created a Facebook account, you can link your Google account from the Linked Accounts area in Facebook so that if you’re logged into Google, or another OpenID account, you’ll go right into Facebook. I tested it, and it does work — sometimes. But that’s not the same as new users opening Facebook accounts with another company’s login system).
The Facebook Master Key

Opening a Facebook account with another provider’s login is really a side issue, however. To me, the real story is how your Facebook account “key” increasingly lets you open many non-Facebook doors.
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Google launches a new anti-spam algorithm against content farms

Earlier this month, Google announced that they will release several new anti-spam algorithms this year. The first algorithm update has just been released and it deals with content farms.

What are content farms?

There are two slightly different definitions of content farms:

1. Content farms are scraper sites that aggregate the content from other sources to get high rankings for a variety of long tail keywords. These sites don't have unique content and they only aggregate the content from other websites to get clicks on their AdSense ads.
   
   
2. Content farms are websites that produce low quality content in bulk. This content is often produced by workers from low-wage countries. The main purpose of these sites is to get high rankings for as many keywords as possible to get clicks on the AdSense ads that are displayed on the site.

Sites that copy the content from other websites often ranked higher than the original site in Google's previous algorithm. That's why Google released the algorithm update.

Google's Matt Cutts confirmed the new algorithm:

"[I mentioned] that 'we're evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others' content and sites with low levels of original content.'
That change was approved at our weekly quality launch meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week."

Less than 0.5% of search queries have significantly different results

Matt Cutts also said that most surfers won't notice the change:
"This was a pretty targeted launch: 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.
The net effect is 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."

The algorithm doesn't seem to be perfect yet

In an online discussion, many webmasters complained that their original sites have suffered while low quality sites still rank well:
"It doesn't matter if it is all 100% unique with tons of backlinks and really well laid out or simply an image. Everything got whacked.
Our out of date non unique ad filled sites are humming along FINE. So what's the message here Google? Write an in depth article that takes 3 days to complete and is linked to by hundreds of companies and gov agencies and loose all positions sitewide while our out of date halfbaked and useless content does fine?"

Should you change your web pages?

Google doesn't like spam. If you want to get lasting rankings on Google, you have to do three things:

• Create a high quality website that you plan to keep for long time.
• Optimize the pages of your website so that both website visitors and Google get what they want.
• Get as many good backlinks as possible to show Google that your site can be trusted.

Spammy SEO techniques often deliver quick results but they only work for a short time:

If you plan to build a lasting online business, focus on ethical search engine optimization methods. It takes longer to get high rankings with ethical SEO methods but your website will keep the high rankings for a much longer time:

The content farm algorithm update was only the first step. Google will release many more anti-spam algorithms this year. If you want to be successful with your website, you must make sure that you offer a useful site and that you offer Google the content that they want.
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