Google continues “Panda-Mania” with the roll out of Panda 2.1…
Over the past few months a few of us Sharp-Eyed SEO’s have spotted changes in Google’s algorithm and additions to the original Panda Update (or Panda 1.0) which was set in place by the search engine to crack down on content farms and low quality content on the web. Panda 1.0 first rolled out in February which affected about 12% of search results done in the U.S. targeted at removing “Shallow” or “thin”, useless content mostly generated for SEO purposes to ‘Game’ the search engines.
When first installed, many search marketers had little knowledge of the update. It wasn’t until after reading Google’s official blog and other media did many SEO’s finally realize that Google had engineered a new, smarter filter to its search engine algorithm to help get rid of all the wasted space and useless, or copied info out on the web. After it’s initial roll-out, there have continued to be supplemental updates to its original update respectively dubbed Panda 2.0 (an international roll-out released in April) mainly having to do with how the engine incorporates data about the sites that users ‘block‘ into their algorithm. Finally, the recent implementation of Panda 3.0 (officially coined 2.1) introduced a couple of weeks ago, has since spawned a new breed of “Panda-mania” across the search world; causing us to continue our fore-thought into what Google will possibly come up with next!?
Because of all the mayhem, this so-called “Panda-mania” has indeed been born and rightfully JUST due to all the useless, low-quality content (hot-garbage) on the web presented strictly for the purposes for gaining search engine ranking. The key to success is not just to ‘game’ the search engines or to do what’s necessary to get to the TOP, it’s about working together with the search engines and not just the search engines, the user. What would you (the searcher) like to see if you were to do a search? Helpful, useful, intriguing information; or useless nonsense, most likely with grammatical errors that looks like it was scraped off some other site? Probably the first one right? That’s the ticket…
This is exactly why Google is the undisputed powerhouse that it currently is because of the relevancy factor they’re bringing to the table, giving users websites that are meaningful and related to their searches. Giving the user what they want. It’s almost like Google did some ‘Spring-Cleaning’ by eliminating and removing redundant, low-quality content that the engine has already previously indexed and ranking sites that are unique and increasingly more useful. The key is to improve the user experience not dilute it with unnecessary content. Whatever the case, the reigning Sheriff in town (Google) has just hired a whole new set of deputies (algorithm updates) to clean things up, make sure you follow the rules (via content creation) or you just may be ousted and run out-of-town.
Thanks For Reading!
~JAWS
