Google Panda Now More “Finely Targeted” – New Update Confirmed

 

It’s happened again, Google have confirmed another update to the Panda Algorithm. Back in March Google announced an end to the confirmation of Panda updates, the theory being that it would become a rolling process and less jolting than it was.

This is a minor U-turn of sorts, at least in regards to their previous stance on keeping us in the loop regarding algorithm changes. Intent that Panda would become part of the rolling update cycle presented us with the prospect of having a tougher time isolating issues/sudden drops and therefore encouraging an adoption of a higher standard from the beginning (rather than algorithm chasing) if you hadn’t started doing that already.

Nevertheless in the following video (released in May) Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web Spam Team, does hint at summer refinements for Panda (skip to 5m02). But understandably everyone was more bothered about the potential implications of Penguin 2.0 which had just hit at the time.

The initial feeling so far is that webmasters are reporting recoveries of sorts and the new Panda is somehow “softer” or more “gentle” than it once was, and this certainly echoes the remarks of Matt Cutts in the above video. If this is the case then it ultimately means that Google is working to reduce the difference between what Google needs to see (written content) and what the user wants to see (rich content, not just text). Whether or not this is actually the case is yet to be seen, and with all updates there will be winners and losers.

Have you been effected by Panda or any other Google algorithm updates and are worried that there might be content quality issues on your website? Get in touch for a free SEO healthcheck!

 

5 thoughts on “Google Panda Now More “Finely Targeted” – New Update Confirmed

  1. Hi Chris

    I am looking forward to the cleaning up of result clusters (as a Google user more than a SEOer). Im just sick and tired of going through 3 or 4 pages and only seeing the same website. If i thought that site was interesting, i would of clicked on it the first time! I dont need to see it 20 times!

    Thanks Chris. Kev Massey from SixtyMarketing.

    • It’s hard to know what to expect from this latest Panda update in regards to domain crowding. The most promising sign we had for this was in the update they seemed to roll out just before Penguin 2.0, however, since then the results have been so variable it’s hard to tell what’s working well and what isn’t.

      The most recent Panda feels more like refinement and fine tweaks than anything else, although with the flux we’re still seeing, it’s still early days.

  2. Will be far too late for lots of businesses to recover, interestingly in our core industry I have seen some long time established sites move down, these sites were stable and had a lot of content on their pages but I never saw it changing much, perhaps this is a potential issue too.

    keep up the information stream.

    S

    • We’ve been seeing similar take place recently too - striking a balance between being “Panda Safe” and taking advantage of QDF can be a challenge for most! There would be those that argue a solid content focus should keep you safe on both sides, but with search it’s never quite as simple as that.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *