Google Panda Strikes Again…With Some Friends!

In February of 2011, Google released an update to their algorithm code named, Panda, and the search world was turned on its head.  The stated goal of the Panda update was to try to remove lower quality content from Google’s search results and increase the rankings of the higher quality content.

The results of Panda were mixed.  Some lower quality pages and sites were dropped and, unfortunately, some higher quality sites were also hit as collateral damage.  But Google wasn’t done with Panda in February 2011.  Not by a long shot.  Since Feb 2011 Panda has been updated at least 10 times, with the most recent update in March 2012.

It’s still somewhat unclear exactly how Google determines what is “high quality” content, but there are some things that they have specifically stated they look at as indicated in Google’s webmaster quality guidelines.  Some of the major elements are:

• Too many ads: If you have a lot of ads on your site, especially “above the fold” at the top of your site, that could negatively impact your rankings.  Some ads are OK, and Google has not defined exactly how much “too many” is.
• Poor grammar and spelling: Make sure your text is well written.  Do not use spun content.
• Duplicate content: If you have a lot of pages on your site that are copies of articles and other content on other sites, that can indicate that you do not have original content and thus Google may consider you low quality.

This latest update to Google appears to be primarily an update to refresh the “panda effect” so that more recently indexed pages are effected.    Google also said that they are also cracking down on more on sites that have so many ads at the top of their site that you don’t see any of the page’s content without scrolling (ironically, Google’s own search results often require scrolling to get past their ads on smaller screens).  As long as you have quality, original content on your website and don’t have an overload of ads, you should be fine…in fact you may see a rise in your rankings as other sites with low quality content have their rankings lowered.

Panda did not come alone to the party this March.  He had some friends.

Link Evaluation Change:
Google indicated that they are updating the way they evaluate links by removing one of the aspects they looked at previously.  They did not indicate exactly what that aspect was.  They also said they updated the way they look at link text (anchor text) so they can better understand the text.  So, it’s safe to say that links are still very important and having keywords in the link text is still very important.

Private Link Networks:
With links being so important in the Google and Bing ranking algorithms, people are constantly searching for ways to get inbound links to their websites, especially links with keyword-rich anchor text.  A couple years ago someone came up with the idea of creating their own private blog network with thousands of blog sites and then allowing people to pay to post articles to those blog sites that link back to their website.  This has proven to be effective for some websites; however, it’s not something Google likes.  In March Google went on the offensive and de-indexed many of the blog sites in several of these private blog networks.  This has caused some massive ranking losses for people who relied heavily on this link building method.

Google made dozens of other minor changes to their system, but these were the key changes that have effected people’s rankings in March.  Because of these changes in Google, we have seen a lot of shifting around of rankings.  This is typical when Google makes several significant changes to their algorithm.  Usually, there are a lot of ranking changes and then, after a couple weeks, things settle back down.  If your rankings are moving around, it’s best to wait and see where things settle before making changes.