Is Google Rolling Out A Farmer / Panda Update?

Mar 29, 2011 - 8:49 am 9 by

Google Farmer Update Roll OutThere has been a slight uptick in the number of people reporting an update to the Google Farmer/Panda algorithm change.

Yesterday I gave a status update on farmer/panda and said I do not believe it is rolling out. Some disagreed with me but most did not.

The thing is, as Donna said, it might be rolling out on certain Google datacenters and not to everyone yet.

Trusted sources at the ongoing WebmasterWorld threads are saying that they have seen a 20-25% uptick in traffic post the Google update. So while they saw a 60% plus drop in Google referrers, since then, and recently, they saw a 20-25% increase in traffic. In addition, some are saying they are seeing the update roll out to Google UK.

Related to an improvement in the Google US algorithm update, a senior WebmasterWorld member gave some deeper insights into his traffic:

About 85% of my traffic comes from the homepage. So when I saw a 60% drop in traffic post-Panda, it was via phrase-based re-ranking on the homepage, but I did see 200 to 400 position drops (according to WMT) on my 5 shallow pages (that had affiliate links). Since internal pages only account for about 15% of my traffic, I really didn't notice their demotion impact.

So what I think I am seeing, is an increase in traffic due to a specific phrase. That phrase (for the homepage) fell 550 positions, but has recovered to the top 100. This seems to have resulted in a slight upward nudge in longer-tail phrases that utilize that phrase. So "blue widgets" fell to -550, but as of Saturday it now ranks about #99. Subsequently, "big blue widgets" went from #20 to #16. For me, this has been very phrase specific, but I see the "shallow content" aspect. I'm not sure which is the chicken or which is the egg.

So maybe we are seeing early signs of Google updating and rolling out the Farmer/Panda update even further?

Our ongoing coverage and stories on the Content Farmer/Panda update:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Image credit to Nancy Phillips on Flickr.

 

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