Google Panda Algorithm

Google’s Panda Algorithm was first rolled out in February 2011 to hit large content farms by lowering the rankings of web pages with high bounce rates and low quality external links.

Google Panda Algorithm to Affect Content Farm Sites

When the Panda Algorithm lowers a website’s ranking in Google’s search engine results pages (SERP), the website’s visits and page views from Google SEO will drop as a direct result. Sites / companies that suffered hard because of Google’s Panda Algorithm include:

  • About.com
  • Some of Yahoo’s content pages
  • Demand Media

People working on the following roles within the Internet industry should pay attention to Google’s Panda Algorithm updates:

  • Professionals whose role is to manage search engine optimization (SEO) for websites that have large quantity of text content.
  • Webmasters who own and manage multiple websites with multilingual content.

Google Panda Algorithm Updates

  • Panda 1.0 – The first version of Google’s Panda Algorithm was rolled out in February 2011 that hit content farms which caused irrelevant organic search results to show up in Google and affected 12% of searches in the US.
  • Panda 2.0 – Released in April 2011 to all English language search queries worldwide including: British English (google.co.uk), Australian English (google.com.au) and English language search results (e.g. google.fr, google.com.hk).
  • Panda 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 – Several minor algorithm updates in May, June and July 2011.
  • Panda 2.4 – Released in August 2011 for English language search queries globally and non-English language search queries except for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and affected 6-9% of search queries.
  • Panda 2.5 and Panda Flux – Released from September to November 2011 and affected 2% of search queries.
  • Panda 3.1 – After Panda 2.5, it went straight to Panda 3.1 (released in November 2011) without an official Panda 3.0 algorithm update. Since Panda 3.1, algorithm updates have entered a period of Panda Flux where updates started to happen more frequently and were relatively minor.
  • Panda 3.2 – Released in January 2012 and this Panda data update was confirmed by Google.
  • Panda 3.3 – Released in February 2012 as a Panda Flux.
  • Panda 3.4 – Released in March 2012 and affected 1.6% of search queries.

SEOmoz provides a list of all Google Algorithm changes that includes the incremental Panda Algorithm updates.

SEO Experts’ Suggestions for Google Panda Algorithm

Suggestions from Danny Sullivan on Google’s Panda Algorithm updates:

  • Google does make small algorithm updates from time to time to lower websites’ rankings in Google’s SERP, but may be unrelated to the Panda algorithm.
  • Google may update a site’s PageRank from time to time that may have negative effect to a site’s ranking in Google’s SERP, but may be unrelated to the Panda algorithm.
  • Google confirmed it may be possible for some websites to be negatively affected by Panda updates to improve their SERP rankings, if the sites have made significant improvements to the quality of content.
  • Monitor your site’s Google organic traffic fluctuation, instead of focusing only on your web pages’ SERP ranking.

Six Revisions’ suggestions on creating websites that are optimized for Google’s Panda Algorithm:

  • Design for Engagement and User Experience
  • Spelling and Grammar are Important
  • Focus on Content Quality
  • Avoid Too Many Ads
  • Avoid Duplicate Content
  • Less is More
  • Ensure High-Quality Code

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