From the article: "...excessive or big ads at the top, may still get you in search visibility hot water."
"Last week, the changes were officially announced as the “Page Layout” update, which looks at the layout of a page and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result."
"...SearchMetrics, which within the industry is well-known for providing data on losers and winners (in terms of search visibility) from the Panda update and other Google updates, has provided us with a top losers list from the page layout algorithm change."
"In a Google+ hangout video chat session, Matt Cutts clarified how Google’s above the fold penalization will work as many people was wondering if the number of ads will cause an issue, but that’s not the case.
The new algorithm inspects pages to see how much space is used to display advertisements above the fold, so it’s all about the size of ads, not actually the number of ads that are showing on the page.
A very interesting thing is Google will penalize the entire site if there is too much space used to display ads, especially above the fold.
Matt Cutts actually took two yellow stickies and put them on the top of a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and indicated that even if this space was just one big ad it is too much and could be impacted by Google’s new algorithm change."
Robin Good: If you are looking to understand more about Google penalizations, whether "algorithmic" (like Google Panda) or "manual", here is a great guide by David Harry to dive into.
From the article: "Similar to how last year’s Panda Update works, Google is examining sites it finds and effectively tagging them as being too ad-heavy or not.
If you’re tagged that way, you get a ranking decrease attached to your entire site (not just particular pages) as part of today’s launch.
If you reduce ads above-the-fold, the penalty doesn’t instantly disappear. Instead, Google will make note of it when it next visits your site. But it can take several weeks until Google’s “push” or “update” until the new changes it has found are integrated into its overall ranking system, effectively removing penalties from sites that have changed and adding them to new ones that have been caught."
From Google’s post on its Inside Search blog yesterday:
"We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience.
Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away.
So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience.
Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.
Google also posted the same information to its Google Webmaster Central blog."
"Given that Google+ results are dominating so many SERPs these days, Google is clearly leveraging its power in search to build up Google+.
Unless a majority of people start turning SPYW (Search Plus Your World) off, or decide to search in a logged out way, Google has positioned Google+ as a sort of “mini Internet,” ..."
...“Google has decided that beating Facebook is worth selling their soul.”
...
"...If a large percentage of people are logged into Google and/or Google+ when they are searching for stuff, ...Google+ pages are going to rank well for those people.
Hence, I really have no choice but to play Google’s game, and tend to my Google+ page, be I a brand, a person, a small business…. are you getting the picture here?
If you decide to NOT play on Google+, you will, in essence, be devalued in Google search, at least for the percentage of people who are logged in whilst using Google."
"...the Commission has yet to come to a decision over whether to issue a Statement of Objections to Google, specifically with respect to an official investigation into whether the company weights search results - especially searches for commercial products - against certain sites, including online retailers."
"Although the Panda upgrades resulted in very noticeably reduced instances of "scrapers" appearing in Google search results, one of the more interesting side-effects for a multitude of legitimate, "non-scraper" Web sites was a sudden drop in overall traffic across the board, which analytics could directly attribute to reduced referrals from Google, especially from Google News.
Theoretically, one of the unintended - and perhaps unavoidable - side-effects of Panda's more vigorous filtering may have been to reduce the level of assessed popularity of a multitude of topics, especially those pertaining to technology, from Google search results.
That popularity is believed to be a direct factor in determining placement for headlines in Google News.
While the real reason for the reduction in instances of certain articles may actually be due to vigorous filtering, the effect from Google News' perspective could appear the same as if the whole world stopped being interested in such topics by about 40%."
"The urgent need for action has become even more acute since Google's introduction of its 'Panda' algorithmic update earlier this year," Verhayen wrote Almunia."
With Panda, Google is now targeting many established vertical search brands, as well as emerging ones. Panda's algorithmic demotions are more subtle than their predecessors.
Although affected sites do not completely disappear from Google's search results, they are systematically demoted to a point beyond the reach of most users, and so receive little or no traffic from this vital channel."
"Google, the company that has been fighting against paid links and “thin” content, seems to be behind a campaign that’s generating both on behalf of its Chrome browser.
The campaign is odd in two major ways. For one, it potentially violates Google’s guidelines against paid links.
The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, has been quite vocal that sponsored posts shouldn’t be a way for people to gain links in response for payment, that any links in such posts should use the nofollow attribute to prevent them from passing credit to Google’s ranking algorithm.
And yet here, we see one of Google’s sponsored post doing exactly that..."
Robin Good: If you haven't read Tom Foremski take on Google strategy earlier on this year, he is back with more info and an even more comprehensive report. He writes:
"I haven’t come across any analysts or journalists looking into this major shift in Google’s business strategy.
I haven’t seen any financial analysts explaining how Google has been able to grow revenues so quickly — yet some of the answers are hiding in plain sight — in Google’s financial reports.
Google’s strategy is to set itself up as the largest affiliate and displace the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that make money from affiliate marketing.
It wants to be the main affiliate for online sales of branded products and that’s why its organic search results heavily favor large companies — the brand owners.
But this strategy comes at a significant cost — lost jobs as it displaces the smaller firms. It’s not a cost to Google but it is to society.
That’s not a good scenario in today’s hard economic times, it’s a PR nightmare for Google to be seen as anti-small business and causing job losses.
...
Google is also working hard to keep the US government out of its business.
This year it dramatically stepped up its lobbying efforts, hiring more firms and spending a record amount on political influence.
Jessica Guyen reported in the The Los Angeles Times:
Google spent $5.9 million from Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, a 51% jump from a year ago. To put that in perspective, Google spent $5.2 million total on lobbying last year.
Google has doubled its spending on lobbying in the last two years. It has also formed a political action committee to give donations to candidates and it has hired influential lobbyists such as Richard Gephardt, a former House Democratic leader.
So who will come to the aid of small businesses? By the time the government figures out what’s going on, and politicians extract themselves out of the pocket of lobbyists, it’ll be too late."
Gone are the days when you could write a simple “how-to” blog post and rank in the top search results. Why is that? Two very good reasons.
First, all of the general and highly-competitive posts like “how-to blog” or “how-to find a roommate” are already written.
The other reason is Google Panda. Remember Google’s update this past year that took down a lot of the content farms? That algorithm was designed to penalize short and shallow articles and reward high-quality content.
Gianluca Fiorelli writes on YOUMoz/SEOMoz: "must admit that lately Google is the cause of my headaches.
No, not just because it decided I was not going to be not provided with useful information about my sites.
And neither because it is changing practically every tool I got used since my first days as an SEO (Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Gmail…).
And, honestly, not only because it released a ravenous Panda.
No, the real question that is causing my headaches is: What the hell does Google want to go with all these changes?"
And that's a damn good question indeed, to which he answer with a fabulous guide to review and pinpoint what are the key elements of an up-to-date SEO strategy that fully includes Google's recent updates and changes:
"From the point of view that Google has of User, that means that a site to rank:
1) must be fast;
2) must have useful content and related to what it pretends to be about;
3) must be presented to Google so that it can understand the best it can what it is about."
...and then he goes into detail into each one of these elements to explain how and why Google strategy is deeply changing.
This sentence sums up his research and analysis:
"As we can see, Google is not trying to rely only on the link graph, as it is quite easy to game, but it is not simply adding the social signals to the link graph, because they too can be gamed.
What Google is doing is creating and refining a new graph that see cooperating Link graph, Social graph and Trust graph and which is possibly harder to game.
Because it can be gamed still, but – hopefully – needing so many efforts that it may become not-viable as a practice."
Interesting thread developing at Webmaster World Forums on the hypothesis that moving parts or entire sites that have been "pandalized" could have some beneficial effects.
My advice is to test, experiment and report. It is likely that moving small parts, to new, clean and high-quality domains could save come content from complete Panda-obliteration, but it will take some time and more reports to find out.
I hear a lot of webmasters complain day in and day out about all the changes that Google constantly makes to its algorithm and how they affect our search engine placement.
Let me break it to you: it’s not all about what Google has done and will do to update its algorithm.
It’s about what you SHOULD BE doing.
I am sure we all can agree that Google’s ultimate goal is to help people find the most relevant and highest quality sites in Google’s search results (whether they are any good at it is not the question). They are not putting out all these updates just to mess with you...
Hey Martin,
I just checked out your Blog, and I like it a lot. I just left you a comment there. Anyway I have the perfect solution for automation so you can have your Scoops come automatically to Internet Billboards and also you can guest post whenever you like. The solution is a simple RSS plugin that you install to your wordpress blog and when you post it will automatically post to Internet Billboards
Nice one Martin your on the Billboards http://vsb.li/ACrfwG Hey did you manually add this one? Always another option when you feel the love. Great post
No worries Martin perhaps I can eventually set us an RSS myself to import your feed, but for now you can always post occasionally when you like curation is very quick, and also feel free to submit any articles you write as a guest post.
The Google Panda visual history laid out in a visual infographic poster. The nine Google Panda updates release dates and key traits and a summary reminder of what are the key things that this automatic filtering algorithm is after.
"There have been numerous instances in the past where users have been up in arms about the latest Google change, insisting they were moving on to other search engines.
Panda, while painful for many publishers ultimately proved itself to improve search results relevancy.
Google Instant and Preview brought with them cries of "SEO is Dead!" and vows to move on to greener pastures. All the while the needle hasn't budged on Google's market share.
But what makes this time different is this is the first time the credibility of their core search results are being called into question.
Without question, social is an important part of how online users will consume and spread quality content.
But it has to be integrated in a manner that doesn't degrade core search functionality, or worse, sully searcher trust in what is still the most utilized search engine in the world.
Because this, more than anything Google's core competitors can do to them, could prove itself to be the tossed pebble that brings the mighty giant to its knees."
"Google has confirmed reports of a Panda update with us.
[Google] told us they have done a data refresh of the Google Panda algorithm about a week ago, and added that there were no additional signals or algorithm changes. This was only a data refresh.
I saw reports over the past week or so of webmasters commenting about their rankings. Most were complaining that they lost rankings, but some said sites that were originally hit by Panda regained their traffic levels pre-Panda. This would explain the data refresh, where Google ran the algorithm and updated the sites that should or should not have been touched by Panda."
Only those contacts of mine who are active in Google+ are showing up, and this is one of the reasons why I have been encouraging people to get G+ accounts and to become active in that arena.
I don't like it, but Google is essentially doing its best to force everyone into that service. As long as Google remains the key search engine out there, and as long as we continue to use it, we're going to have to play by their rules.
Now, if this just hurt other social networks, I probably wouldn't have that much of an issue, but it doesn't, it hurts me. This is not a helpful service at all.
Now, you can argue that I'm making a fuss over nothing, since I can simply click on the world icon and see everything back to normal again.
That's true, but we've only got half the story so far.
What happens when I try and use Google without being logged into my account - when it doesn't know who I am, or anything about me?"
Robin Here in Brazil is going on a challenge of SEO where we ranker a page for the term Katipsoi Zunontee. My page for participation is as follows: http://www.renatoxavier.com/katipsoi-zunontee If you have any suggestions what I can do tell me. TKS
Google's Don't be Evil motto seems irrelevant now. It's leveraging Google Plus, it cheated with Chrome and it keeps favoring big brands over everybody else.
“Don’t be evil,” Google’s infamous motto. But what they’re really doing is selling us out.
...
Early last year, Google shook up the search world with what’s been dubbed the Panda updates. ...It’s a great idea to push bad content down and original content up; or, according to Google,
...So what’s the problem?
Google launched Google+ in the middle of the year with Skynet-like plans to go mano y mano with Facebook. ...If Google+ failed, so would their hopes at having a social media beachhead, unless they bought Twitter.
So, why not fudge everything around to ensure it succeeds?
The way Google+ integrates the +1 button across the web ties it directly into how search rankings appear.
The +1 became a factor in how a page ranked, though, we can’t be sure as to how much it affects it, but an early test showed that it plays a vital role.
When word began to get around that it became an important tool for websites to rank better, brands and bloggers jumped on it hoping to increase their own visibility."
Excerpted from the article: "Over the course of the last year, we’ve heard loud cries of protest after each of the updates from smaller site owners who felt they’d been unfairly penalized by Panda.
In retrospect though, as we’re heading into a new year, it does seem that Panda is accomplishing what it was meant to do.
Towards the end of 2011, on Webmaster Radio’s Webcology show, host Jim Hedger asked each of the Year in Review panelists what they felt the biggest search story of the year had been. Surprisingly, perhaps, Panda wasn’t really on the radar of some of the more recognized names in search as one of the bigger concerns of 2011.
In the Webcology chatroom, it was generally agreed among industry vets including Jill Whalen that sites hit by Panda, whether they realized it or not, time and again were found to have areas in need of improvement that very well could have contributed to their being snagged in the updates: duplicate content, thin or shallow content, overwhelming ad placement."
This last year Google brought a large number of algorithm changes to the table. Although these changes helped increase traffic and rankings to many large corporations such as YouTube and eBay, it hurt a large majority of small businesses.
According to Search Engine Land, some domains saw a 94% loss in visibility, and others were left picking up the pieces after they lost 80% of their keyword positions.
Consider this graph by Sistrix, created to describe where mahalo.com’s keywords landed on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) before and after one of the Google algorithm updates:
Foremski accuses the company of tweaking its search results to keep visitors on Google's own pages rather than sending them to sites operated by small companies.
Google initiatives such as research into self-driving cars, he says, are intended to divert the attention of journalists, thereby discouraging them from asking questions about these search-engine changes.
Then there's an organization called Saving Small Business. It's agitated about "Panda," the code name Google gave a set of changes it made to its search algorithm earlier this year. Panda aims to emphasize high-quality sites and push down junky ones. But Saving Small Business maintains that Panda "is destroying small business and jobs" by accidentally penalizing good sites along with the bad.
Google formally announced via Twitter that there will be no more Panda updates for the remainder of the year. Granted, there’s not that much left of the year.
Here’s Google’s “weather report” tweet:
Search weather report: no major Panda updates until the new year.
E-commerce sites are much more difficult to manage when it comes to algorithmic changes.
The type of cart or script you have might make all the difference.
However, when there are major algorithm updates by Google, you just cannot change your shopping cart because you probably already have a ton of customizations on your system.
So, what do you do when you have 30,000 indexed pages and 10,000 products on your Ecommerce store with manufacturer’s product descriptions?
How do you fix that vulnerability of duplicate content or being seen as a content farm?
Any day now, the European commission is expected to announce whether it will formally object to what some see as Google’s abuse of its power in the way that it treats smaller sites that offer the same sorts of services as it does.
If that happens, Google could be forced to comply with strictures on the way it treats rival sites offering particular sorts of search – for news, products, maps, shopping, images or videos – rather than pushing its own on the site.
Alternatively, it could face fines of millions of pounds.
On another note the same articles reports about a possible way to escape the Panda by moving blocks of content that have been "pandalized" to new domains.
While on the topic of Panda, a WebmasterWorld member (Content_ed) has an interesting story up about moving his good content from a Panda hit site to a site that was actually boosted by Panda.
“I moved a half dozen pages that were drawing a few hundred visitors a day from Google on my Pandalized (down 80%) site to my Panda pleased (up over 300%) site this weekend,” he says.
...Of the half dozen pages, three were slightly above their pre-Panda level (year-over-year) on Monday, and three were around 20% under...
It’s something to consider, given HubPages’ strategy of subdomaining to separate out the better stuff...
WebmasterWorld moderator Tedster had the following response to Content_ed’s post: “A lot may depend on the number of pages that each site contains.
If you moved half a dozen pages to a domain that contains hundreds or thousands of other pages, you may see no changes with future Panda iterations.
There’s also a chance, since Panda has a site-wide influence, that these pages were not the source of the Panda problem on their original domain. In which case, you made an excellent move.”
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