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Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, posted a video on what to do if you think your site may have been impacted in a bad bad way by the Panda algorithm.
In short, write better content!
Matt said your content should be as high quality as you would read in a published book or in a magazine. It should be unique, compelling and give something more to a reader.
He obviously references back to Amit Singhal blog post but doesn't really give any more guidance than what we had before.
So if you are looking for something new and unique from that video or from this post, you aren't going to get it. Well, I did make a nice animated GIF that is unique. Hope you like it.
I am sorry. Discuss...
Forum discussion at Google+.
Comments:
Praveen Sharma
09/12/2013 12:20 pm
Looking at the gif image, it says you agree that Panda is here to kill ... :)
ethalon
09/12/2013 12:21 pm
Barry, It's your best .gif yet.
Barry Schwartz
09/12/2013 12:28 pm
awww, thanks!
davidquaid
09/12/2013 12:36 pm
How else do you encourage people to get links without building them or fostering them (via your own domains [20 = max right], buying, guest posting, commenting, forum question answering) = Great content!
Craig Hamilton-Parker
09/12/2013 01:24 pm
This gif could give me nightmares.
ethalon
09/12/2013 01:28 pm
Alright, maybe I am dense and missed the first dozen boats or so but: Is Panda called Panda because it eats low quality content? Pandas, stupidly/adorably, eat bamboo...which as far as nutritious plants are concerned, is very low quality. Panda algo eats low quality sites... Please excuse me while I bask in the glory of my slow-to-pick-it-up mind.
Chris Monty
09/12/2013 01:33 pm
So far, Google has chosen black-and-white animals for their algorithm updates to underscore the differences between "black hat" SEO (which is shady and will get you a Google-slap) and "white hat" SEO (which is considered to be more reputable, although some would say it could still get you into trouble). Hence, the ongoing battle between black and white/good vs. evil.
Anti-SEO
09/12/2013 01:38 pm
I started to write long post, then suddenly realized - software engineers say to content creators (read all of us) what content shall we create. Don't you think this is total absurd ? I do. Totalitarian governments can barely control, what content people do create and consider as good/useful/helpful/trustful. It was this way long ago before Google, it will be this way until the sun will rise. What is this ? Big Brother in digital age or just totally broken reality in heads of Google engineers ?
Michael Martinez
09/12/2013 01:42 pm
Unfortunately, this will probably go down in history as Matt's most unhelpful video.
Anti-SEO
09/12/2013 01:45 pm
By the way, Sergei Brin was born in Soviet Union. He probably must re-read history of this, currently not exist, country and share with the engineers hired by his company.
klippers
09/12/2013 02:34 pm
Or scrape the content. That seems to work nicely for a lot of the competition.
MartinB
09/12/2013 03:07 pm
Great GIF! I thought it was named Panda after one of the engineers who worked on it, but I like your theory better, and it makes sense! Panda, Penguin... It also matches Google's naming trends, with all the dessert names for Android updates and such. Content Farms, watch out!, Matt Cutts is on a witch-hunt!
james
09/12/2013 03:08 pm
LOL, He's like a broken record maybe he should do better quality videos which are unique. If i was a panda i would be so angry that google is insulting the whole panda race with by calling there updates after us...... I might actually go to a zoo and get a panda to write my content..
John
09/12/2013 03:35 pm
"Matt said your content should be as high quality as you would read in a published book or in a magazine. It should be unique, compelling and give something more to a reader." So on a website that sells products you want content that's written like a book or magazine? Now I have not had any sites hit by this penalty but that statement makes no sense at all. Ok yeah if its just a blog or your talking about a blog on a site which sells product then yeah of course. Problem comes when your a website that sells products and there is little content to actually write, let alone write it like a book.
ethalon
09/12/2013 03:47 pm
A perfect example of taking a statement and attempting to apply it bluntly without thinking. Of course he doesn't expect you to write thousands of words of text for a product, but that doesn't mean that you can't write quality descriptions. Product descriptions should be unique (ask anyone who deals with ecommerce sites...duplicate product description are, while sometimes unavoidable with certain vendors, a sure way to tank your sites rankings if you aren't the top dog(s) in that niche). If you have an ecommerce site, there is really no reason why you couldn't right up product descriptions like they have in magazines -it's getting close to every-god-damn-catalog-in-my-mailbox time and those 'magazines' seem to have no problem writing quality content to accompany the product. They guy isn't in the profession of spelling everything out to us. Anything he puts out there should be considered in the context which it was said and understanding his function within Google.
Brian
09/12/2013 03:49 pm
Does anyone think design has to do with "better content"? Providing a better overall experience..yada yada yada
Takeshi Young
09/12/2013 05:39 pm
Wow, recovering from Panda is so simple! Thanks Matt!
Chad
09/12/2013 05:53 pm
Google's SERPS have too many ads above the fold. Funny, it hurts your site to do the same...
Anti-SEO
09/12/2013 06:12 pm
If you're talking about the advertising magazines, then I doubt we need more or such spam. If you're talking about regular magazines, then every magazine has chief editor, who is responsible and readers, who are final judges. If readers will not buy magazine, then chief editor will be replaced. The relations are like this: Product ----> Readers (judges) ----> Responsibility It doesn't work this way online, because online it looks like : Product ----> Google (judge) ----> Readers ----> Responsibility This is another question how did this happen and what to do. Right now the Google is the Judge. However history shows, that only Market can control relations between product creators (web developers) and product consumers (readers/buyers). Any other system is unstable a priori. I understand MC good intentions, but no doubt this is big mistake to make statements like this in unstable system. It can't help anyone, just causes more negative reaction.
guy
09/12/2013 08:21 pm
lie again. need to put it into the topic with examples of google lie
guy
09/12/2013 08:30 pm
it about behavioral factors, not about "content quality" if not count the grammar.
guy
09/12/2013 08:32 pm
not forget to give very special name for your panda. m.c., i think you know. ;)
guy
09/12/2013 08:34 pm
when him was leader, everything was ok. but when second guy become leader and hired indian guy, see what happens.
guy
09/12/2013 08:36 pm
i think it about black google eating small white websites. grand evil hunt for money.
Rob jH
09/13/2013 11:25 am
Nice Gif, does that count as high quality content?
Gridlock
09/13/2013 05:07 pm
LOL at comparing yourself to Google.
Durant Imboden
09/13/2013 05:47 pm
In the magazine industry, there's also: Product ---> Distributors (judges) ---> Readers You'll also find: Product ---> Librarians (judges) ---> Readers In other words, there's nothing new about middlemen controlling access to editorial media. The main difference is that, on the Web, the middleman doesn't control access absolutely: If you live in Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas and you want to read something that Google doesn't index, you can go to Bing, Yandex, etc. or simply type the URL into your browser's address bar.
John Britsios
09/13/2013 07:21 pm
Barry, do you also believe that readability is a quality factor when it comes to Panda?
Graciousstore
09/16/2013 04:19 am
Google has emphasized quality content for long now I'm sure most people are abiding by that rule
Alok Raghuwanshi
09/16/2013 06:30 am
Ys #MattCutts High quality Content is a very imp piece of Google Panda
Chitraparna Sinha
09/19/2013 06:01 am
Matt Cutts should open a content assessment academy. Every piece of content should be first approved by his team and then published; these pieces will be "Panda-proof" or any other animal update they come up in future!