Blogging from a handheld device has been growing in popularity lately, and the way the Internet facilitates free flow of information has certainly made it easier. However, a recent change by Google in the way they’re delivering their search results may have the potential to affect your blogging – and not for the better.

The farmer update which is being tested in some areas of the world at the moment, is supposedly aimed at improving the quality of Google’s search results by removing content farming websites. It turns out that it also filtered quite a few legitimate ones, presumably for the reason that they hold a small amount of copied content which cannot be dealt away with.

As someone who blogs on a handheld, how would this affect you? For one thing, you should consider where you’re posting your content at – if you’re using your own independent blog then you most likely would be fine and not get affected by the farmer update. On the other hand, those who use their devices to publish content to popular content directories may soon find the popularity of their works decreasing, with more of these websites being filtered.

Google’s stance on this situation is that it’s worth killing off the traffic to these websites to remove their malicious content from being shown – but when that content is such a minority in them, is that really a justified move? Moreover, should you be concerned even if it doesn’t affect you personally? Most would probably say no, but consider the situation carefully – this can very well set a precedent for the way Google – the largest and most important search engine at the moment – handles the delivery of its content to users in the future.