The biggest losers this time around appear to be "content farms," big websites with tons of poorly written, keyword-stuffed content. In a recent piece in Website Magazine (a truly great magazine for anyone who relies on the internet for business-which is another way of saying anyone who needs to eat to stay alive) they list some of the sites that have seen the biggest drop-off in traffic this time around. Unfortunately, the article online doesn't include that graph.

The worst hit was blippr.com, losing almost 98% of it's traffic from Google. The list contained some surprises (at least to me), such as business.com and merchantcircle.com. There were also some article marketing websites I've contributed to, like ezinearticles.com and hubpages.com that were hit hard.

So what's the takeaway for the average website owner?

• Quality content counts more than ever. Although the "news" is that a lot of content farms took a big hit, the takeaway is that the rest of us putting up unique, quality content are all edging up.
• If you used article marketing as a link building technique, that ship has probably sailed. I would focus more on guest blogging opportunities.
• Don't put all your eggs in the Google basket. In fact, don't put all your eggs in the search basket. Instead, diverse your investments, and spend more time driving quality leads from social media activity.