“Everything about the Google Farmer - Panda Update and how to recover from it”
Curated by
Robin Good
"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."
Read the full article: http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-3-2-update-confirmed-109321
(thanks to Giuseppe Mauriello)
Scooped on:
Google Farmer Panda Update
Google Farmer Panda Update
From the article: This is a guide on how to find and fix Google's Panda algorithm update, based on our Panda fighting experience at SEOgadget in 2011. Key takeaways: 1) The world is not as it once was. Crap websites trying to masquerade as decent websites are being hunted down and sunk below the quality line. 2) Google owes you nothing. Tactics to just barely raise your quality enough to recover your rankings are unlikely to pay dividends. You may well find yourself a loser again the next time the quality bar is raised. 3) Google is judging you. Google is going to continue to raise the quality bar with future updates. When your competitors improve their websites, you will be weakest and in line for the chop at the next quality update. Informative. 7/10 Full article: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8583-how-to-identify-and-fix-google-panda 
Robin Good: Nonetheless Google has declared a full-blown war on "thin" and "shallow" content, since just about one year now, you like me, may be still confused about what constitutes that low-quality type of content that Google does not like. Brian Ussery has recently published a good guide focusing specifically on this very aspect: Understanding exactly which could be the low-quality content signals that your web site or blog may still be sending out. Key sections covered in this guide include:
Highly recommended. 8/10 Full article: http://www.beussery.com/blog/index.php/2012/01/quality-content/ 
Robin Good: Now that Google pays so much more attention to "user experience" and satisfaction on our site, it becomes a must to start looking at all the ways in which you can improve the key metrics Google increasingly looks at. Among these "bounce rate" is among the important ones and it represents the number of visitors that abandon your site after having looked at one page. Though the bounce rate per se, it is not in absolute terms to be considered a negative element, if paired with very short times on the page and with a frequent use of the browser "Back" button from the visitors abandoning your page, than it is a major red flag for Google telling it your site may not be worth so much. To improve this situation, Kelly Shaver has written a valuable short guide for the WebTrends sponsored Customer Experience Series on Mashable, covering key strategies you should invest time on, to help bounce rates and overall user experience on your site. The seven key strategies include (my short explnation below each one): 1. Be Mindful of Ad Placement Be careful of where you put your ads and how many you use. 2. Lazy-Load Third-Party Content Load third-party widgets and stuff later than the main stuff. 3. Contrast Is Key Make your pages as readable as they can be. 4. Have Clean, Accessible Navigation No more words needed. 5. Your Message Should Be Immediately Obvious State clearly and immediately what you are about 6. No Distractions, Please Quiet your site distractions down 7. Have a Responsive Layout Use the latest technology updates to code your site so that it is visible across all kind of devices. To get all of the details for each one of these, please go and check the full article. Useful. 7/10 Full article: http://mashable.com/2012/02/02/lower-bounce-rate-tips/ 
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." Check out the top losers list here: http://www.webpronews.com/exclusive-google-page-layout-update-the-top-losers-2012-01 From the article: "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." Recommended. Read the full article: http://www.famousbloggers.net/googles-above-the-fold-clarification.html (Curated by Robin Good) 
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. Key sections in this guide include:
Recommended. 8/10 Full article: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2141098/Google-Penalty-or-Algorithm-Change-Dealing-With-Lost-Traffic 
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.
Such sites may not rank as highly going forward. Google also posted the same information to its Google Webmaster Central blog." Read the full article: http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-penalized-by-googles-page-layout-algo-108613 
John Battelle writes in his blog: 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." Read the full article (and the comments below): http://battellemedia.com/archives/2012/01/our-google-conundrum.php 
From the ReadWriteWeb official article: "...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. Read the full article: http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/01/eu-commission-no-decision-yet.php 
Danny Sullivan writes on Search Engine land: Aaron Wall wrote about the campaign today at SEO Book, spotting how a search for “This post is sponsored by Google” brings back over 400 pages written apparently as part of a Google marketing campaign... 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..." Read the full article: http://searchengineland.com/googles-jaw-dropping-sponsored-post-campaign-for-chrome-106348 See the follow-up story, Google: Yes, Sponsored Post Campaign Was Ours But Not What We Signed-Up For. Postscript 3: See Google’s Chrome Page No Longer Ranks For “Browser” After Sponsored Post Penalty ![The Google Panda Timeline for 2011 [Infographic] | Google Farmer Panda Update | Scoop.it](http://img.scoop.it/WdaXf9heZLfEo4Z4UGdLADl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB_Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ)
A full visual timeline of Google algorithm changes for 2011: the year of the Panda. 
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." Informative, insightful. 9/10 
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.
Now, I’ve got good news and bad news for you. Via Martin Gysler |
Robin Good: This is an excellent and thorough guide on how to find out whether you have been hot by Panda and on how to fix Google's most feared automatic penalization algorithm to date, based on the Panda fighting experience at SEOgadget in 2011. From the article: "Panda is about dealing with bad content, not bad links. Bad content comes in different flavours: duplicate, weak, thin and template.
Large sites that have many pages, templated content and lots of sub-categories are the most at risk. If you haven’t been monitoring and fixing your accessibility issues, as highlighted in Google Webmaster Tools, you are at risk." Three key takeaways: "1) The world is not as it once was. Crap websites trying to masquerade as decent websites are being hunted down and sunk below the quality line. 2) Google owes you nothing. Tactics to just barely raise your quality enough to recover your rankings are unlikely to pay dividends. You may well find yourself a loser again the next time the quality bar is raised. 3) Google is judging you. Google is going to continue to raise the quality bar with future updates. When your competitors improve their websites, you will be weakest and in line for the chop at the next quality update." Highly recommended. 9/10 Full article: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8583-how-to-identify-and-fix-google-panda 
From the article: "We've asked when will Google roll the Panda algorithm more seamlessly into their algorithms - where Google does not have to manually press a button to run the Panda algorithm, but rather where it runs all by itself (I am pretty sure I am oversimplifying it).
"High-quality sites algorithm improvements. [launch codenames "PPtl" and "Stitch", project codename "Panda"] In 2011, we launched the Panda algorithm change, targeted at finding more high-quality sites. We improved how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines. We also released a minor update to refresh the data for Panda." ... It seems like this means Google has made Panda a bit more integrated into the mainstream algorithm, allowing it to possibly run more frequently and who knows, maybe more real-time? Read the full article: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-pipelines-14686.html 
From the article: "Google today listed changes it made to its algorithm in January. As previously discussed, the biggest takeaway from that (at least in my opinion) was an increased focus on freshness through not only updates to the “Freshness Update,” but also through changes to universal search, which focus on the queries that deliver news results. The company also addressed a recent Panda tweak: High-quality sites algorithm improvements. [launch codenames “PPtl” and “Stitch”, project codename “Panda”] In 2011, we launched the Panda algorithm change, targeted at finding more high-quality sites. We improved how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines. We also released a minor update to refresh the data for Panda." Read the full story: http://www.webpronews.com/google-panda-update-addressed-in-new-google-announcement-2012-02 
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. 
Nathan Safran writes at Search Engine Watch: 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." Interesting, informative. 8/10 Read the full article: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2141766/How-Google-Could-Threaten-Googles-Core-Search-Business (Curated by Robin Good)
"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." Read the full article: http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-3-2-update-confirmed-109321 (thanks to Giuseppe Mauriello) 
Excerpted from the article: "How much of an issue is this? It's a seriously large issue, because it immediately limits what I see to a small subsection of my actual world. I'm not seeing content from all my contacts, just those that Google chooses to show me. If you think that there are anti-trust implications in this you would be right. 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?" Find out by reading the full article: http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2012/01/why-google-search-plus-is-a-disaster-for-search.html 
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." Read the full story here: http://www.trippedmedia.com/2012/01/google-dont-not-be-evil/ ![Search Engines Are Winning the War on Content Farms [STUDY] | Google Farmer Panda Update | Scoop.it](http://img.scoop.it/IWpxjAMV2huNZEFWT-E-ADl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB_Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ)
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." Read the full article: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2135047/Search-Engines-Are-Winning-the-War-on-Content-Farms-STUDY 
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: 
Here is an in-depth analysis at the Google Panda Update and at the tactics and solutions that can be put in place to recover from it. Key recommendations include: STEP 1: High quality content STEP 2: User Engagement STEP 3: Social Presence STEP 4: Increase click-through rates STEP 5: Find low-quality pages STEP 6: Site layout design STEP 7: Site Speed STEP 8: Ads to content ratio STEP 9: Links STEP 10: Panda Myths Informative. 7/10. Full article: http://seotoolster.com/seotoolster/blog/google-panda/ 
Critics claim that Google's search-engine formula is a rigged game. But Harry McCracken says the anti-Google conspiracy theories don't hold water. "In a ZDNet blog post titled "Google's highly profitable war against small businesses and jobs," my friend Tom Foremski accuses Google of ... well, waging a highly profitable secret war against small businesses and jobs. 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. Read the whole story: http://www.allbusiness.com/google-war-small-business/16754323-1.html |
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