Google Panda 4.0
What You Need to Know
Google’s Panda algorithm, created in 2011, was designed to prevent high ranking results in a Google query for lower quality content sites. When first released it impacted 11.8% of the English queries made through Google. Subsequent updates of the algorithm have been so frequent that Google stopped announcing refreshes and updates.
This changed in May 2014 when Google announced the release of Panda 4.0. Panda 4.0 is the next wave of Google, lowering the ranking of sites that don’t have original copy. This new Panda release seems to have targeted aggregator websites (sites reposting information and collecting information from different sites rather than original content). Press portals, press release sites, news sites that re-published stories, and price comparison sites were the type of sites hit hardest with the latest version of Panda 4.0.
The Panda algorithm, in general, seeks to reward with higher ranking sites that offer high quality, original, focused content and punishes with a lower rank sites with thin content, re-published content and “spammy” user generated content.
Some of the sites that showed a drop in SEO visibility after the Panda 4.0 release, as reported by SearchEngine Land, include: PRNewsWire.com, PRWeb.com, BusinessWire.com, and PRLog.org. All of these sites showed a drop in SEO visibility between 60-70%. yellowpages.com also saw a 20% visibility decrease.
To withstand the negative impact of Google’s Panda 4.0 publish rich, original, interesting, and useful content.
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Google Panda Infographic
Getting Responsive to a Growing Mobile Userbase
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