"This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites--sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other Websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites--sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis, and so on."

Improvements to search results would be good news when turning to Google for information on almost any subject, whether fax machines or cloud computing. However, Google searches, as millions of users experience on daily basis, often involve sifting through pages of useless, SEO-doctored links of little or no value. But is Google really trying to do better?

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how Google will go about reducing rankings for sites that are low in quality, and especially, how its algorithms can determine what's useful for one user versus others. For starters, Google's blog post says the improvement will affect only 12 percent of all queries, which hardly portends a profound change when it won't alter 88 percent of all searches.

As for the lower dredges of humanity who cut and paste content from other sites and purport that it belongs to them, hopefully Google will be able to at least take some sort of action. Reducing their rankings would be a good start, but how will Google go about doing that?

Then there is the major issue about how companies to boost their rankings, which has generated much controversy recently when the revealed the creative ways JCPenney was going about improving its search results. Maybe Google's announcement about its "big algorithmic improvement" was in response.