Google Panda 2.5: Losers Include Today Show, The Next Web; Winners Include YouTube, Fox News

Searchmetrics has a pretty good track record of figuring out who lost after one of Google’s Panda Updates. Among the latest victims of this week’s Panda Update 2.5, some unexpected surprises: popular tech blog The Next Web, blog aggregator Technorati, and NBC’s The Today Show. Winners include Google’s own YouTube, along with Fox News and several other mainstream news sites.

Apparently, that patented SEO process that Business Wire just announced isn’t much help to the company. It was listed among the victims, along with PR Newswire.

About The Losers

The names are from a report that Searchmetrics has just released.

It’s worth noting that that Searchmetrics doesn’t really know the degree any of these sites has actually been harmed by the Panda update. The company computes a “visibility” score for a wide-range of keywords. The companies named above, along with others, have lost visibility for those terms.

It could be despite this, these companies have gained visibility for terms that aren’t checked. It could also be that the terms they’ve lost visibility for weren’t sending important traffic that converted into sales or ad revenue.

Those caveats aside, it’s been pretty common that after Searchmetrics has issued one of its winners / loser reports, some of the sites have stepped up to confirm the assessments.

Here’s the full losers list:

For Every Loser, There’s A Winner

There’s also a winners list. Once again, Google’s own YouTube site is winner. It tops the latest list, something that’s sure to raise controversy in a climate when Google’s facing criticism that its search results favor itself. Google’s Android.com is also in the top winners list. So is Google-partner AOL.com.

A site that won’t be gossiping over the news is Perez Hilton, among the winners. And while magazine Motor Trend took a hit, magazine US Weekly rose. Other big winners were mainstream news sites like the Washington Post, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal.

While YouTube was the top winner, TV.com from CBS Interactive was in the number two spot. In fact, on a percentage basis, it did better than YouTube.

Here’s the winners list:

Also notable on the winners list is HubPages, which was hit hard by previous Panda updates but claimed to have recovered back in July.

More Information

If you’re trying to understand more about the Panda update, and perhaps recover from it, see our Related Entry links below.

If you’re trying to understand more about SEO in general and know nothing about it, might I recommend our What Is Search Engine Optimization video. It’s only 3 1/2 minutes long:

[youtube width=”560″ height=”315″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF515-0Tduk[/youtube]

Need more SEO information? Head over to our What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization? page, which links to guides and resources here at Search Engine Land and across the web about the topic.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.