Lookback: Google Panda algorithm update launched 13 years ago
Here's a complete history of the Google Panda Update, its impact on search results, and its lasting legacy on SEO.
Topic: EHow
Are Games & Lyrics Sites Google Panda 4.1’s Biggest Losers?
Google began rolling out Panda 4.1 last week, a process that continues into this week, but we already have the winners and losers report from SearchMetrics. The biggest winners for Panda 4.1 based on this early report are sites in the news, content and download portal realm. While the biggest losers are sites in the […]
On MetaFilter Being Penalized By Google: An Explainer
MetaFilter is a news and discussion site dating back to the early years of the web. Founded in 1999, it’s attracting attention this week after coming forward about how a Google penalty has severely harmed its business, to the degree of having to let staff go. It serves as a poster child of problems with […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 6, 2013
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Google Introducing “In-Depth Articles” To Search Results Google is rolling out “in-depth” articles this morning. We previously wrote about the test when it appeared a couple of months ago. In-depth articles […]
Google Panda Two Years Later: Losers Still Losing & One Real Recovery
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles looking at the aftermath of Google’s Panda algorithm update, which launched February 24, 2011.) Two years ago today, Google sent shockwaves through not only the SEO industry, but also through online publishing in general when it launched the Panda algorithm update. It was originally […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 16, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Confirmed: Marissa Mayer Leaving Google For Yahoo CEO Role CNBC is reporting that Marissa Mayer is leaving Google today, and will take over as Yahoo’s President and CEO as of tomorrow. […]
Google Panda Update Costs Demand Media $6.4 Million In 4th Quarter?
Demand Media posts $6.4-million loss in fourth quarter from the Los Angeles Times reports that Google’s Panda algorithm is mostly to blame for Demand Media’s $6.4 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2011. Demand Media released their earnings report last night, showing revenues up 15% year over year, but profits down from a positive […]
Demand Media: “We Will Have Fewer eHow.com Assignments For The Foreseeable Future”
Demand Media, the owner of many websites that have often been tagged with the “content farm” label, is planning to slow down its article production at eHow.com, its flagship website with three million articles. Business Insider has published an email sent from Demand Media to its stable of freelance authors. The email explains that, because […]
No, Says Google, It’s Not Panda 2.4 Or Any Update
Yesterday, there were early rumors floating around at WebmasterWorld that there was yet another Panda updating taking place, possibly Panda 2.4. I covered it at the Search Engine Roundtable and asked Google for confirmation. Google informed me that there is no Panda update taking place currently. Google told us, “no Panda update is currently occurring.” […]
Major Google Updates Documented
SEOmoz announced they have published the Google Algorithm Change document detailing all “major updates” that happened since the Boston update in 2003. SEOmoz did it with style in this graphical document: While I agree with a lot of the updates listed here, I had worked up a list of my own a few months ago. […]
Official: Google Panda 2.3 Update Is Live
Google has confirmed to Search Engine Land that late last week it pushed out a small update to the Panda filter. “We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users,” a Google spokesperson told us. “This most recent update is one of the roughly […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 24, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Health To Be Shuttered On January 1, 2012 Google Health, the company’s attempt to improve health care by letting consumers move medical data online and control who can access it, […]
Blekko Slashes More Spam With “Zorro” Update
Blekko has found its mantra: the war on spam. The search startup, now six months old, is trying to challenge Bing and Google with a strategy that puts human curation and editorial judgment at the center of search and banishes spam altogether. CEO Rich Skrenta has been relentless in asserting that Google is filled with […]
Google’s “Me On The Web” Pushes Google Profiles — Take That, Facebook?
Google has launched a new “Me On The Web” section within its Google Dashboard area, which seems designed to push more people toward creating Google Profiles, as well as create greater awareness of how things that leak out of Facebook and other social networks may end up on Google. The Facebook Factor Perhaps I’m reading […]
Coming Soon: Google Panda Update 2.2
One of the bigger pieces of news — certainly for webmasters and SEOs — from our SMX Advanced conference this week is that Google will soon be releasing version 2.2 of the Panda algorithm update. Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that during Tuesday’s keynote question-and-answer session with Danny Sullivan. Cutts said that the update has been […]
It’s Panda Update 2.1, Not Panda 3.0, Google Says
There have been rumblings that Google has unveiled another huge algorithm change being dubbed “Panda 3.0” in some quarters. Officially, Google says it’s not so. Only a minor update, “far smaller” than Panda 2, has happened. Changes have been spotted by some sharp-eyed SEOs over the past few days, and Google agrees that there were […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 6, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Impacted By Google’s Panda Update? Google Asks You To Consider This… Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, published a blog post on the Google Webmaster Central blog named More guidance on […]
Hit By Panda Update? Google Has 23 Questions To Ask Yourself To Improve
Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, published a blog post on the Google Webmaster Central blog named More guidance on building high-quality sites. Amit’s goal with this post is to have those webmasters impacted by this Panda Update, which rolled out internationally about a month ago, with some direction and guidance to help explain what […]
Hitwise Data Pegs Panda Impact On Demand Media Sites At 40%
Demand Media sites have suffered an estimated loss of about 40% of overall Google traffic since the Panda/Farmer update took effect. That’s according to new Experian Hitwise statistics measuring outbound traffic from Google to other sites, and reported today by Forbes. The Hitwise numbers suggest that about 0.57% of all outbound Google traffic went to […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 19, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Dutch Agency Orders Google To Remove Data About Citizens’ WiFi Routers Dutch data officials have ordered Google to give the country’s residents a way to remove data that Google has about […]
Demand Media: Panda’s Impact On eHow.com “Significantly Overstated”
Demand Media says recent reports have “significant overstated” the impact of Google’s Panda update on eHow.com, its flagship website. In a brief statement issued early this morning, the company says: Certain third parties that have published reports attempting to estimate the effect of recent search engine algorithm changes made by Google on traffic to the […]
Panda Update: Google Lowers The Boom On eHow.com
After escaping damage in the first rollout of Google’s Farmer/Panda update, Demand Media’s eHow.com was reportedly not as fortunate in this week’s expansion. Sistrix, one of the companies that’s been tracking the impact of Google’s changes, says that eHow.com was hit hard by the latest Panda update. We already reported the Sistrix (and other) numbers […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 14, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Q1 2011 Revenues $8.58 Billion, Some Investors Unhappy Google had a strong Q1 with $8.58 billion in gross revenue. Net revenue was $6.54 billion. Both figures were somewhat better than […]
Winners & Losers As Panda 2.0 Goes Global? eHow, Bing’s Ciao.co.uk & More
It’s only been 48 hours since Google expanded the Panda/Farmer update to all English language searches outside the US, and we’re already seeing reports about who the early winners and losers are. In some cases, the names are familiar if you followed the original reports when the algorithm change first hit in the US in […]
Panda 2.0: Google Rolls Out Panda Update Internationally & Incorporates Searcher Blocking Data
Late February, Google launched a substantial algorithm change (known as “Farmer” or “Panda”) aimed at identifying low-quality pages and sites. These are pages (often seen on so-called “content farms”) with text that is relevant for a query, but may not provide the best user experience. (Google calls it a “high quality sites algorithm”.) Today, Google has […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 24, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The Yahoo Search Direct Alphabet: Where Every Letter Starts With Yahoo And you thought Google favored its own properties? Check this out: In Yahoo’s new Search Direct feature, 21 of the […]
The Farmer/Panda Update: New Information From Google and The Latest from SMX West
Today at SMX West, the subject of the day was content farms. One session included the founder of (sometimes-called content farm) Associated Content, Luke Beatty, and focused on the good that can be learned from content farms, as well as what sites who have been hit by Google’s Farmer aka Panda update can do to regain […]
More Farmer Update Winners, Losers: Wikihow, Blippr & Yahoo Answers
As search industry analysts continue to review the fallout from last week’s Google Farmer update, we’re getting new snapshots of what sites were hurt and which ones have survived the crosshairs of Google’s latest algorithm change. One such analysis from SearchMetrics confirms much of what’s already been reported, but also adds several new names to […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 2, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How To Make A Great First Impression With Ad Copy + Landing Pages A good referral may still be the best way to find a consumer driven business. However, with more […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 28, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Number Crunchers: Who Lost In Google’s “Farmer” Algorithm Change? On Thursday, Google announced a major change to its search algorithm, designed to weed out shallow and low-quality content from its top […]
Number Crunchers: Who Lost In Google’s Panda Algorithm Change?
On Thursday, Google announced a major change to its search algorithm, designed to weed out shallow and low-quality content from its top search results. Content farms were seen by many as the target. Were they hit? Who was hit? Some figures are coming out.
Demand: Google Changes Have Produced “No Material Impact” Yet
Last night, Google released the Farmer Update, which was Google’s response to improving the quality of the search results, particularly removing sites “which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.” Many suspect that this was aimed at “content farms” and some labeled properties from […]
Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Panda” Algorithm Update
In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material. New Change Impacts 12% Of US Results The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 9, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Super Bowl Sparks Twitter Record For Sporting Event Fans watching the final few moments of the Super Bowl last weekend set a new record for Tweets-per-second (TPS) for a sporting event: […]
Mahalo’s Calacanis: Time To End The Content Farm Arms Race
No stranger to controversy, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis threw down a gauntlet at his “content farm” competitors, arguing they’re polluting the web and angering Google, to the detriment of searchers and their own companies.
Demand Media & Being “The Best Click” On Google
Demand Media’s success? Listening to what people want and generating great content to show up at Google. At least that’s part of it, said Demand’s chief revenue officer Joanne Bradford — and she came armed with screenshots and examples to prove it.
Blekko: Actually We Have A Million Slashtags
Embargoed news for this morning was published last week. That news was that Blekko had 30 million search queries in January and “users have created more than 110,000 slashtags since the company’s launch in November, an indication the search market is thirsty for innovation.” Blekko has recently gained attention for banning the “top 20 spam […]
What Time Does the 2011 Super Bowl Start? A (Continuing) Lesson in Search Visibility
(For those wondering what time the game really does start, the 2011 Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers kicks off on Fox at around 6:30pm ET.) Before the Super Bowl in both 2009 and 2010, I checked out the search engine results for the Super Bowl start time. In 2009, […]
Blekko Bans Content Farms From Its Index
TechCrunch reports Blekko, the SlashTag search engine, has made the bold move of banning some “content farms” from their index completely. Rich Skrenta, Blekko’s CEO confirmed the ban with us today. He told us Blekko has decided to ban the “top 20 spam sites from blekko’s index entirely, based on our users click /spam on […]
Google Sets Sights On Content Farms In 2011
Google has fired a warning toward “content farms” — you’re in our anti-spam sights in 2011. That message was made loud and clear in Matt Cutts’ blog post today, a post in which Google also says its search quality has improved due to new spam fighting techniques. Cutts points out that Google has already taken […]