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: Leaf Group
This day in search marketing history: February 25
SEOs upset over Google featured snippets, plus: Google's red Slow label, Google Panda fallout, PageRank 301 redirect dilution myth and more.
This day in search marketing history: February 17
Microsoft introduces the Bing Network, plus: Standard Shopping campaigns, Google Panda eats Demand Media, Google Social Search and more.
This day in search marketing history: February 8
Google Chrome's 'not secure' warning, plus: Search Ads 360, Google News and Discover penalties, content farms and more.
This day in search marketing history: January 27
Google AdWords API launches, plus: PAA vs. featured snippets, Google hiring an SEO, Expanded Text Ads findings and more.
AI content: Is it helpful or spam?
AI-generated content has its place in SEO. Whether it's helpful or spam depends on how, where and why you're using it.
In search of your most memorable moments; Monday’s daily brief
Plus, only YouTube and Reddit have seen much usage growth since 2019.
The most memorable Google algorithm updates of all time
Panda, Penguin and the Florida updates still loom large. What you can learn from their history.
10 big changes with search engines over my 20 years of covering them
Search Engine Land founding editor Danny Sullivan looks at how search has changed over the two decades he's been writing about it.
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 […]
Open Letter: Why Search Engine Land Will & Won’t Cover Someone Being Penalized By Google
It’s been big news recently about major brands and Google penalties, and the floodgates feel open on people spotting even more brands possibly hit out there. Some new crackdown by Google? No. It’s the rise of hyperactive attention in this area, and that’s turning into a problem. Hence this open letter, on how we’re planning […]
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, May 9, 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: 10 Great Adwords Options For Boosting Conversions We all know that Adwords is the most used system in the world to drive paid traffic to websites. The Adwords system is an […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 17, 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: 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 […]
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 […]
SMX East 2011: In-House SEO Operations: How Things Get Done
In-House SEO Operations: How Things Get Done Presentations from SMX East – NYC, NY, September 2011 In this session we’ll talk about SEO operations (the systems, templates, worfklows, etc.) when doing SEO in-house. This session will be less about SEO tactics and tools you hear about, and more about the integral workings of in-house SEO […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 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 Shuttering Buzz In Favor Of Google+; Farewell To Labs Buzz was a great learning experience, says Google, but in a few weeks it will be shut down and all such […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 10, 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: Bing Rolls Out Another New Deals Product Bing has put considerable effort in the past several months into building out its deals content. First Bing introduced third party deals via its […]
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 […]
Blocking Sites Within Google Goes International
Google announced that the blocking sites feature introduced in the US based results in March this year, is now available internationally. Google’s Johannes Henkel said “starting today, you can now block sites on most Google domains.” Here is a picture of blocking Matt Cutts blog in Google France: As discussed before, there is a dashboard […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 11, 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: Game On: Google+ Now Offers Games You knew it was coming: Google+ now includes games. According to a screenshot posted on Google’s announcement, there are currently 16 games available at launch, […]
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.” […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 10, 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: Yahoo Gives Image Search A New Look Yahoo’s Image Search is sporting a fresh look today that presents the image results in a cleaner, more organized fashion. Do a search and […]
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 […]
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 […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 4, 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: New Google Analytics Feature: Load Time Measurement Since the beginning of last year, Google Analytics has been pushing a faster load time by pushing the new asynchronous tracking code to being […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 26, 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: 50 Percent Of Those Exposed To Mobile Ads Took Action Google today released findings of a smartphone-user study that the company did with Ipsos OTX at the end of 2010. […]
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 18, 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: 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 […]
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 […]
SMX West 2011 Slide Video: Content Farms
“Content Farms” Or The Smartest SEOs In the World? Presentations from SMX West, March 2011 You may not be familiar with the names, but companies like Demand Media, Seed.com and Associated Content are big businesses built on closely watching what people are searching for and creating content to match. Using cheap or free labor, these […]
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 […]
If Google Was New York City & Online Piracy Was Knock-Off Handbags…
Imagine my shock when I used Bing to search for “Where to buy knockoff products in New York” and found a treasure trove of information on the web leading me to an apparently little-known area of New York City where such products are available around Canal Street: Imagine my further shock to discover that major […]
Report: Google Still Web’s Dominant Traffic Driver, But Some Niches See Facebook Gaining
A wide-ranging report out today paints a rosy picture for the future of search and search ads, and more specifically for Google to continue its dominance of the search landscape. But there are small niches where Google’s position as a dominant traffic driver might be taking a hit. Citi analyst Mark Mahaney released a 30-page […]
You Can Hate (Block) But No Longer Love (Star) Google’s Search Results
Google has disabled the ability to star search results from within the Google search results page. As you may remember, Google replaced SearchWiki with starring results back in March 2010, about 16-months after Google launched SearchWiki. Now that Google has re-introduced a way to block sites in Google, Google has determined you no longer need […]