The Google Panda Update strikes again!

The Google Panda-nator

The goal of the search engine giant has always been to provide users with what they are searching for in as quick and simple a manner as possible.  The most common obstacle to this equation is generally spam or content farm sites.  Therefore, in February of 2011, Google created an algorithm, known as the Google Panda Update, that was designed to punish sites that we simply ‘key word stuffing’ for the purpose of ranking high in the Google search engines yet not providing any real value to the end user.

According to Wikipedia, this is how the Google Panda Update works:

Google Panda was built through an algorithm update that used artificial intelligence in a more sophisticated and scalable way than previously possible. Human quality testers rated thousands of websites based on measures of  quality, including design, trustworthiness, speed and whether or not they would return to the website.  Google’s new Panda machine-learning algorithm, made possible by and named after engineer Navneet Panda, was then used to look for similarities between websites people found to be high quality and low quality.  Many new ranking factors have been introduced to the Google algorithm as a result, while older ranking factors like PageRank have been downgraded in importance. Google Panda is updated from time to time and the algorithm is run by Google on regular basis.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Panda

Last week, the Google Panda Update 3.3 was released.  So what does this mean for SEO?

Google Panda Update 3.3 | What changed?

Overall, there were a total of 40 changes that occurred with the Google Panda Update.  According to the Official Google Search Blog, here are the top, most relevant changes that the Google Panda Update has unleashed:

• Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.
• Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
• SafeSearch update. We have updated how we deal with adult content, making it more accurate and robust. Now, irrelevant adult content is less likely to show up for many queries.
• Spam update. In the process of investigating some potential spam, we found and fixed some weaknesses in our spam protections.
• Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.
• Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
• Improvements to freshness. [launch codename “iotfreshweb”, project codename “Freshness”] We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.
• More locally relevant predictions in YouTube. [project codename “Suggest”] We’ve improved the ranking for predictions in YouTube to provide more locally relevant queries. For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in India].
• More accurate detection of official pages. [launch codename “WRE”] We’ve made an adjustment to how we detect official pages to make more accurate identifications. The result is that many pages that were previously misidentified as official will no longer be.
• More coverage for related searches. [launch codename “Fuzhou”] This launch brings in a new data source to help generate the “Searches related to” section, increasing coverage significantly so the feature will appear for more queries. This section contains search queries that can help you refine what you’re searching for.

Google Panda Update 3.3 | Synopsis

Recently Google launched search plus your world, which is incorporating the results of social media into search results.  The next step taken to improve search results with this Google Panda Update is to focus on result relative to the users location.  Therefore, the Google Panda Update has increased the importance on local search engine directories.  Google makes no secrets about increasing search personalization, and this change will deliver searchers greater personalization, based on the location they have given Google.  If you have not yet set up your business on online local search directories, then you will definitely want to incorporate this strategy into your SEO plan quickly.

Another one of the bullet points that really stands out is that Google has killed off one of its long-time link evaluation methods.  There is plenty of speculation as to what this means, and obviously Google is being coy on the subject.  What this means is that Google may be removing the PageRank factor from its link evaluation process and replacing it with it’s Quality Score algorithm used in Adwords to determine quality sites.

As usual, if you want to avoid any problems with the Google Panda Update, then make sure that you’re putting out good, quality content and linking to other quality sites.  If you keep the satisfaction of the end user in mind, then you will be in step with any of the Google Panda Update releases.

Google Panda Update 3.3 | History Infographic

Here is an infographic on the history of the Google Panda Update since last year from Search Engine Land.