The SEO community has been a buzz this past week with the latest update
from Google, named Penguin. Penguin came down the pipeline last week,
right on the tail of the latest Panda update. Since most of the big
updates in the past year have been focused on Panda, many site owners
are left wondering what the real differences between Panda and Penguin
are. Here is a breakdown:
Google Panda Update Overview:
According to Google’s official blog post when Panda launched,
Google Panda Update Overview:
According to Google’s official blog post when Panda launched,
This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites
which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or
sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide
better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and
information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and
so on.
Basically, Panda updates are designed to target pages that aren’t
necessarily spam but aren’t great quality. This was the first ever
penalty that went after “thin content,” and the sites that were hit
hardest by the first Panda update were content farms (hence why it was
originally called the Farmer update), where users could publish dozens
of low-quality, keyword stuffed articles that offered little to no real
value for the reader. Many publishers would submit the same article to a
bunch of these content farms just to get extra links.
Panda is a site wide penalty, which means that if “enough” (no specific
number) pages of your site were flagged for having thin content, your
entire site could be penalized. Panda was also intended to stop
scrappers (sites that would republish other company’s content) from
outranking the original author’s content.
Here is a breakdown of all the Panda updates and their release dates. If
your site’s traffic took a major hit around one of these times there is
a good chance it was flagged by Panda
1. Panda 1.0 (aka the Farmer Update) on February 24th 2011
2. Panda 2.0 on April 11th 2011. (Panda impacts all English speaking countries)
3. Panda 2.1 on May 9th 2011 or so
4. Panda 2.2 on June 18th 2011 or so.
5. Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd 2011.
6. Panda 2.4 in August 2011(Panda goes international)
7. Panda 2.5 on September 28th 2011
8. Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th 2011
9. Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th 2011
10. Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th 2011
11. Panda 3.1 on November 18th 2011
12. Panda 3.2 on about January 15th 2012
13. Panda 3.3 on about February 26th 2012
14. Panda 3.4 on March 23rd 2012
15. Panda 3.5 on April 19th 2012
1. Panda 1.0 (aka the Farmer Update) on February 24th 2011
2. Panda 2.0 on April 11th 2011. (Panda impacts all English speaking countries)
3. Panda 2.1 on May 9th 2011 or so
4. Panda 2.2 on June 18th 2011 or so.
5. Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd 2011.
6. Panda 2.4 in August 2011(Panda goes international)
7. Panda 2.5 on September 28th 2011
8. Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th 2011
9. Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th 2011
10. Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th 2011
11. Panda 3.1 on November 18th 2011
12. Panda 3.2 on about January 15th 2012
13. Panda 3.3 on about February 26th 2012
14. Panda 3.4 on March 23rd 2012
15. Panda 3.5 on April 19th 2012
Search Engine Land recently created this great Google Panda update
infographic to help walk site owners through the many versions of the
Google Panda updates.
Many site owners complained that even after they made changes to their
sites in order to be more “Panda friendly,” their sites didn’t
automatically recover. Panda updates do not happen at regular intervals,
and Google doesn’t re-index every site each time, so some site owners
were forced to deal with low traffic for several months until Google got
around to re-crawling their website and taking note of any positive
changes.
Google Penguin Update Overview:
Google Penguin Update Overview:
The Google Penguin Update launched on April 24. According to the Google
blog, Penguin is an “important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The
change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating
Google’s existing quality guidelines.” Google mentions that typical
black hat SEO tactics like keyword stuffing (long considered webspam)
would get a site in trouble, but less obvious tactics (link
incorporating irrelevant outgoing links into a page of content) would
also cause Penguin to flag your site. Says Google,
Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as
spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is
that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they
are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.
Site owners should be sure to check their Google Webmaster accounts for
any messages from Google warning about your past spam activity and a
potential penalty. Google says that Penguin has impacted about 3.1% of
queries (compared to Panda 1.0’s 12%). If you saw major traffic losses
between April 24th and April 25th, chances are Penguin is the culprit,
even though Panda 3.5 came out around the same time.
Unfortunately, Google has yet to outline exactly what signals Penguin is
picking up on, so many site owners that were negatively impacted are in
the dark as to where they want wrong with their onsite SEO. Many in the
SEO community have speculated that some contributing factors to Penguin
might be things like:
1. Aggressive exact-match anchor text
2. Overuse of exact-match domains
3. Low-quality article marketing & blog spam
4. Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links
1. Aggressive exact-match anchor text
2. Overuse of exact-match domains
3. Low-quality article marketing & blog spam
4. Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links
It’s important to remember that Panda is an algorithm update, not a
manual penalty. A reconsideration request to Google won’t make much a
difference–you’ll have to repair your site and wait for a refresh before
your site will recover. As always do not panic if you are seeing a
down turn in traffic, in the past when there is a major Google update
like this things often rebound. If you do think you have some sort of
SEO penalty as a result of either the Google Panda or Google Penguin
updates, please contact your SEO service provider to help or start
trouble shooting.