(41)
Google rolled out a Panda update late on Friday. Google announced the update on twitter saying:
Panda refresh rolling out now. Only ~1.6% of queries noticeably affected.
Looking into the wording on this tweet, we can learn a few things:
(1) 1.6% of the search queries were effected, which is small but large for those hit.
(2) This is specifically a "refresh" and thus it seems like no new signals or algorithm changes were made to this Panda update. In short, they simply reran the algorithm on their index.
Panda refresh rolling out now. Only ~1.6% of queries noticeably affected. Background on Panda: goo.gl/mTKCH
— A Googler (@google) March 23, 2012
There was speculation that this update was being rolled out earlier but I am not sure if it was specific Panda related or not.
The previous Panda update was 3.3 taking place on February 26th or so. Here is the timeline:
Past Panda Updates:
- Panda 3.4 on March 23rd
- Panda 3.3 on about February 26th
- Panda 3.2 on about January 15th
- Panda 3.1 on November 18th
- Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th
- Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th
- Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th
- Panda 2.5 on September 28th
- Panda 2.4 in August
- Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd.
- Panda 2.2 on June 18th or so.
- Panda 2.1 on May 9th or so.
- Panda 2.0 on April 11th or so.
- Panda 1.0 on February 24th
There is a lot of discussion around this announcement.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Google Webmaster Help.
Comments:
Manendra
03/26/2012 02:23 pm
Thank to Panda i haven't find any change in my ranking and traffic. volusionreviews
SEO New York
03/26/2012 02:51 pm
But according to the blog it says this was posted on 24th February 2011. (Please see the date of the post on the blog)
Jigga
03/26/2012 03:54 pm
Google was just referencing that blog post as an explanation as to what Panda was. Mr Cutts in fact confirmed the update occurred on March 23rd.
Chris Hughes
03/26/2012 06:52 pm
A few of my affiliate blogs had a change in ranking because of Panda. But the majority of my sites are still ranking well.
Steve
03/27/2012 07:08 am
Whoa - that was quick update after 3.3! We are currently issuing our interpretations of Google Panda 3.3 at http://www.zhetainternational.com/en/company/blog/beating-google-panda-part-1.html Anyone knows what was affected in the 3.4 version?
mg
03/27/2012 11:39 am
Thanks
Sourabh Rana
03/27/2012 11:45 am
No, Info from Google what is the impact of this Panda update on sites ranking & traffic. What kind of sites are effected in this update or any improvement from last updates ?
Peter Elmhirst
03/27/2012 01:03 pm
or if you got hit by Panda stop being a spammer! Algorithm genius and Adwords sales rep? You're a busy guy Matt! :)
Rawing88
03/27/2012 03:09 pm
i hope couple my site back soon again with pagerank from last panda update3.4..hope
Rawing88
03/27/2012 03:10 pm
be better for my site come back again
Barry Schwartz
03/27/2012 05:15 pm
They just reference that post. There was a new update on Friday.
Abhinavnn143
03/27/2012 05:26 pm
I am not really sure about panda 3.4 , 3.3 is for the sites they many link for the specfic keywords, What is 3.4 ....any one have an idea
6Jobs
03/27/2012 09:51 pm
Every single day google are mixing up there search results . To me google is going down hill for example if i want to buy something why the hell am i seeing wiki bloody pedia. I want to buy i didn't ask for information stupid search engine that's why i started to use bing much better to me.
6Jobs
03/27/2012 09:58 pm
lool i don't think this is really Matt Cutts.
Eren
03/28/2012 10:08 am
I work in the UK for an insurance comparison site and we have been seeing some very strange results. A lot of low quality sites are coming in out of the blue and seems to be the opposite of what Google Panda was released for. I hope this is temporary and this update filters out these low quality sites. Anybody else seen similar in their industry?
SEO India
03/28/2012 06:33 pm
Thanks for update i have come back again ....
Chet
03/28/2012 08:19 pm
I had a couple of sites that slipped from page 1 for many keywords to page 3 since Friday. Many of my sites are insurance related and now they have been pushed further down in the SERPS and been replaced with news outlets articles.
Casjewel
03/29/2012 08:43 am
I can feel some changes from the Panda update, not my websites but my competitors. it is a good chance to see how everything is going on and find some useful things.
Eren
03/29/2012 08:55 am
The frustration is that half of these sites pretty much go against every single Google guidline in the book and still are appearing in prominent positions. I dont neccesarily think this is directly influenced by this particular update - but in theory it should. In more competative industires like insurance it seems that a lot of websites get away with murder. I have looked at their link portfolios and its one of the worst I have seen. The problem is that people build these sites, make a quick buck and by the time Google gets wind of it, its too late.
Urvesh
03/30/2012 06:39 pm
my site went from having good rankings for 5 keyword, straight to 0 on all. How do I fix this? Is it just a dance? Or has my site been banned? I never received any notice! Please help me out, I won't be checking here, so email me? web@sixinchnails.com
SEO KickStart
04/02/2012 08:45 am
One of my sites was hit early this year and this tweak has restored all rankings which is great. Shows that the de-duping pays off :-)
kevin Cook
04/02/2012 01:44 pm
My site is majorly effected in latest panda and is out of ranks on all keywords, i got the mail from google that my content is of poor quality, is there any chances that i can gain ranking for my site.. is their any stratagy which can help in getting my site back..
Chet
04/02/2012 03:56 pm
I spent the weekend making changes to a bunch of test pages so we will see in a few days what the end result is. One thing I did discover is that they are certainly not done reshuffling the deck as my results are still dancing all over the place.
David
04/02/2012 06:15 pm
Is it known if this update also rolled out in the UK? Any confirmation from Google that this wasn't limited to the US?
Ashley, cutey
04/03/2012 05:27 pm
Panda has really crippled SEO, seems the end of off site SEO.
John
04/03/2012 08:20 pm
This is Google way of marking more money and saying Spend more for SEO to bring ranking back up ..its time to change over to Bing
Vineet
04/04/2012 11:24 am
how can i gift a real/original panda to Google.
hometipster
04/05/2012 08:27 am
I have to agree with John, by the time Google has finished it would have killed off organic search completely leaving nothing but an empty shell and loads of Google Ads. Even my site with all unique content, no ads above the fold, easy to use nav we got hammered by the recent change and lost all our ranking for the major keywords. What is laughable is that one company continues to get high on Page 1 and it's nothing but a single page packed with Google Ads and Affiliate Advertising. Google is going to end up the same way as Yahoo! and that's a sinking ship.
Geoff
04/05/2012 05:31 pm
I keep waiting for one of these updates to reset the algorithm back to what Google has always preached to us - get links, good content, etc.
SEOSMOPPC
04/08/2012 06:19 pm
Do not agree with this viewpoint. Rather, more creative SEO with self-restrain... more towards internet marketing, needs to be done. Selective and thoughtful off-page SEO which does not look odd intuitively will still hold relevance
SEOSMOPPC
04/08/2012 06:23 pm
I can tell from my experience that the URLs of the so called SEO-friendly sites were ridiculously long-tailed, at times involving more than 7 words. Just because others were to be beaten on SERPs people failed to recognize the brand value that each page of the site brings. So, google is doing fine work.
SEO Company India
04/08/2012 07:08 pm
I always wants this list of google panda updates to read n follow when i started to work on my seo company website.. thanks seoroundtable...
SEO Company, QI
04/12/2012 12:39 am
That update did take a while to hit certain websites. The refresh happened over the course of a few days I believe and did not fully impact the search results until a few days after (completely).
Prakash Dhaila
04/12/2012 03:10 pm
I get a lot of higher ranking for my clients websites after this changes. thanks google
Menzess
04/14/2012 08:16 pm
Frequent update in algorithm through Google panda is removing low quality sites from Google SERP. Even situation is such that no one can predict what changes Google is doing in its algorithm.
Glen Woodfin
04/16/2012 12:15 am
Panda Schmanda, I'm more concerned about their manual attack on paid blog networks since it opens the door to building links to one's competitors to get them deindexed. That's real news.
Steve Masters
04/17/2012 08:21 pm
Improve your content. Ensure you don't have too many links within articles, make sure you don't carry too many site-wide links to third party sites (like a blogroll) and make sure you don't have too much repetition of the same anchor text throughout your site. Ensure your pages are not dominated above the fold by Adsense banners. Also, check your backlink profile to make sure you are getting inbound links from a wide variety of domains and IPs with a wide variety of anchor text. Whatever you find that's bad, work on cleaning it up and you should see an improvement.
Vijay
04/18/2012 02:07 pm
Does any one know what has actually changed in this algorithm.
John
04/21/2012 07:16 am
Seriously, if this is about quality search results, why is there still so much utter crap in the top 10? It doesn't matter what you type in, you can guarantee garbage will be in there somewhere. Meanwhile, some poor bastard who has built a site with hard work and graft gets slammed because he's not an SEO expert who knows wtf is going on. askthebuilder.com
Saurabh Bajpai
04/25/2012 12:44 pm
http://www.websolutionmedia.com also down rank in google..please suggest me my sites is in penalty or not
michael v
04/25/2012 10:37 pm
http://www.portugalproperty.com - Our website has been knocked from page 1 No.1 spot to the bottom of page 2 for our main keywords to pages 3 or 4 for others. This is both unbelievable for us as a company for also for our thousands of clients and potential clients that look at buying Portugal property. To say our website is not the most thorough and relevant in our market is nothing more than a joke. We have hundreds more pages of relevant content than our competitors, have spent, and continue to spend thousands on providing our web visitors the best internet experience possible. Instead the odd one-man-band website/s have jumped numerous places. How is this possible? We have a real estate portfolio at least 3 times larger than any other company in Portugal focusing on the international market, have the best website (I honestly don't think I am being biased, we were given an award in 2011 because of it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcWs7np9R8U - with Google supposedly part of the judging panel!! Yes thats right..) with the most information, is the most user friendly, the images for the properties are of the highest standard, yet websites that have been put together with little to no thought, with 50 properties (versus 4000) are now beating us in the rankings. We are No.1 on Bing & Yahoo, yet we are now say 40th in Google?!? This clearly has nothing to do with quality of content, or actually selling the most relevant product to a persons searched needs. One hopes things get back to normal and we are just doing some bizarre Google “dance”…Fingers crossed..Anyone from the roundtable care to share their thoughts??