You’ve probably seen the headlines, or been hearing people talk about Google releasing its new Panda update. What the heck? Panda? You’ve pretty much brushed it off and decided it wasn’t applicable to your business. This is a mistake. Google updates like this are crucial to know about if you own a business. These updates can make a difference in your website, local rankings in search and your reputation with Google.
Listen up as we explain everything you need to know about Google’s Panda update to keep your business website successful and safe.
What is Panda, Anyway?
No, it’s not the cute, furry black and white bear that nibbles on bamboo. Panda is an algorithm update by Google that is aimed at monitoring/getting rid of low-quality web content.
Why Should I Care?
If you have had an agency put bad links on your website or if someone in your business has used this method on your website, you may be punished. Updates like Panda are designed to keep bad links and spammy content off of the internet.
Panda goes after:
- Affiliate sites that don’t have useful information but use the links as gateways to other sites
- Lists of bad links
- High ranking websites that feature a lot of broken or blank pages upon clicking through links
- Keyword stuffing, deceptive content, pop-ups, forced downloads
- Content farms [sites that have a lot of how-to articles that are weak in depth]
This is where it comes in handy having a marketing agency monitoring your website content. If you’re not staying on top of the latest marketing/advertising news your business could suffer significantly and you could not even know why! And trust us, you don’t want to be on Google’s bad side! Not showing up in search engines means less visitors to your website and less customers as a whole
How Is Panda 4.1 Different Than Before?
Posted by Jim Yu, Marketing Land
Although Google closely guards its algorithmic secrets, here’s what we know about Panda historically, based on what Google representatives have said about it and on other data analyses shared amongst the web marketing community:
- Panda targets “thin” content on sites, which often equates to a general lack of content
- Panda targets duplicate content, usually when a site has a large volume of it
- Panda targets machine-generated content (what marketers often refer to as “spun content”)
- Google said it would no longer be announcing Panda iterations, as it would be incorporated into the regular indexing process
- Google said it was working on a “softer” Panda that would help small websites and businesses do better in the Google search results
So, why did Google announce this Panda rollout if it said it wasn’t going to announce any more iterations?
According to an announcement on Google+ by Googler Pierre Far, something about the algorithm had changed.
Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.
- Pierre Far, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst
Could this be referring to the “softer” Panda Google spoke about back in March?
Google hasn’t opened up on the specifics, but based on initial findings from others around the web and at BrightEdge, we can share data on what types of sites have been impacted positively and negatively. Let’s do that now.
How Panda 4.1 Impacted Brands Online
Over at G-Squared Interactive, Glenn Gabe wrote about the impact Panda 4.1 had on affiliate sites, which may not come as a surprise to most – but what is a surprise, as Gabe pointed out, was that some of those sites were still standing today after all the iterations Panda had gone through in the past.
From his post:
[Continue Reading Original Article: How Google’s Latest “Panda” Algorithm Should Change Your Content Strategy]
If you need help with your internet marketing or brand exposure we can help. Half a Bubble Out is a marketing/pr/advertising/consulting agency that helps businesses grow as passion and provision companies. We serve all of Northern California including the Chico, Redding and Sacramento areas.
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