Look at it this way. The day-over-day drop in EMD influence was just over 10%, which is pretty significant. It’s a bit like unemployment though – it’s around 8%, which we all agree is less than ideal. For any given person, though, you either have a job or don’t have a job. That aggregate statistic is kind of irrelevant to your personal life.

What we’re basically trying to do is validate what Google is saying (or not validate it, as the case may be) and add a layer of transparency. Beyond that, the impact of any change on any one of us is something we each have to measure and understand ourselves.

@rob –

It is always hard to face a “quality” check on one’s own website objectively. I don’t have any examples to share of a well established domain taking a hit. Dr. Pete shared the teethwhitening.com story. I may know somebody that has some examples of EMDs that picked up a few spots, but doesn’t really care to have those under the microscope. All in all, hardly a game changer.

I do think quality should rise to the top though. Hopefully this will encourage quality niche sites instead of junk.

Of course, what makes a website ‘quality’ is a value judgment. How much ‘quality content’ is it actually appropriate for your local dry cleaner to place on their website?