Google Panda Update: A Critical Study

Google Panda, also known as Google Farmer, is basically a program that learns from user surveys and human preferences. The credit of it goes to Navneet Panda, a Google engineer and an expert at Machine Learning from India.

This update, introduced on February 24, 2011 by Google, is named as “Panda Update” after the name of Navneet Panda. It works on predictive choices of the users.

Google panda involves a Machine Language Algorithm (MLA) update that uses artificial intelligence in a more sophisticated and scalable way than the before. Like human quality tester it measures and scrutinizes quality of the content, judges its originality, uniqueness and relevancy.  It inspects elements like quality links, designs, graphics and other paraphernalia. It looks at the words that appear on WebPages, how users are linking to these pages, and more on the reputation of websites.  It plays such an important role in Google search engine ranking that many experts belong to SEO field prefer to say “Google Panda is more a ranking factor than algorithm update”.

How does Panda Update work?

It acts as a quality filter on search results, using survey data to determine desirable and undesirable site characteristics. It does mean more organic traffics and good search results that help a site get better ranks in Google.

Good copy sells and popularity get huge incentive on Google.

It does guarantee on “high quality content” that is interesting, enjoyable, pleasing, adequate data and statistics enriched.

Override domain policy is subject to undergo penalty.

It is refined and pushed manually on a monthly basis

It deploys internationally in English

Low scores on some deep URLs can impact the entire domain

Panda works based on the followings:

Search impressions

Click Through Rates (CTR)

Browse rate (action on your site) and bounce rate

Time on site

Repeat search and visit

Onsite search queries

Navigation paths

Google Panda & Content

Keyword density of the top 3 results should not be more than 0.5%.

The content volume of a top 3 search result should be over 2400 words (3C)

Insertion of keyword in the title is more reliable factor than putting it on the URL.

Using keyword is more important factor than perfect match domains or exact keyword in the meta description

Regardless of length all pages should be well written

As use of attractive images and their proper placement stimulate imagination, it helps in getting more traffic and their staying on your page longer.

Your use of videos can assist time on site

Use content that is interesting, engaging, pleasing, enjoying, and adequate.

Good, fresh and relevant content is subject to get very good incentives on behalf of Google.

Very good popularity and copy sells earn its own links automatically.

Some Important Tips for Content, Keeping Pace with Panda:

Do research on keywords and select most relevant that people may use to find your content.

Use keyword at the title of your content.

Your links must be from trusted, reputed and quality websites.

Do links with the words of your WebPages that you think people may find for.

Keep visitor attracted and arrested to your website to keep your site away from bounce

All pages should be fresh and on hot topics.

Make many links point at your webpage

Share your content with many reputed social networking sites.

Add history

It should be loaded quickly to lower bounce rate.

Ensure factors so that search engine easily “crawl” pages on site.

Keyword density of the top 3 results must not be more than 0.5%

The average content length of a top 3 search result should be over 2400 words (3C).

Include images to stimulate imagination and place them in a proper way to increase readability. 

Significant panda updates:

1.0 - February 24, 2011 (Monday)

2.0 - April 11, 2011 (Monday)

2.1 - May 10, 2011 (Tuesday)

2.2 - June 16, 2011 (Thursday)

2.3 - July 23, 2011 (Saturday

Besides another important panda update in March 2012, states “over-optimization penalty" that does mean if you do more works (low quality) it will be penalized by Google.

Effects of Google Panda:

With the panda update, Google has improved their ability to detect scraper sites and banish them from the SERPs. This update has brought almost 12% changes in the search results.  As the consequence of panda update by Google, a rise in the rankings of social networking sites and news sites has been found. 

Consequences of Google Panda:

Lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites"

Thin or duplicate content is treated as a low ROI tactic

It penalizes or permanently bans spammy and copied content

Time lapse updates make testing almost impossible

Link building is not a way to overcome a quality penalty

SEOs need to acquire deeper skill sets

If you are a webmaster or an SEO expert, you must know Google Panda as “Google Panda" is more a ranking factor than algorithm update”. Be out of your old SEO methods and accept Panda for better ranking.