Google made a significant tweak to their main ranking algorithm in late February 2011 that they internally refer to as the Google Panda Update. It’s also been called the Farmer update since it targets low quality pages commonly referred to as Content Farms.
Two of the main architects of the Panda Update were interviewed by Wired.com and had some interesting comments. Here’s some selected quotes and some commentary by me…
Matt Cutts described how some content farms had been outranking quality sites. He mentioned what the content farms were doing to avoid the previous spam filters:
Matt Cutts: It was like, “What’s the bare minimum that I can do that’s not spam?”
Matt says they created some new formulas to identify “shallow content” sites and then cross checked their results by using human checkers. They gave the human checkers a list of questions to gauge the quality of each site in their quality test.
“Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card? Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?”
“Do you consider this site to be authoritative? Would it be okay if this was in a magazine? Does this site have excessive ads?”
For some, this might bring up a new way to think about your website. If you’ve not updated your web design in years, you might fail their litmus test. If your headline is “Happy New Years 2010” and you don’t have good content… well, it’s time to get some help.
Another interesting part of the quote is about excessive ads. “Excessive” is a judgement call but most people know it when they see it. Make sure that your Advertising to Content Ratio is solid.
Google was asked about a new option in the Chrome Browser that allows users to tag sites as blocked:
Chrome Site Blocker [allowing users to specify sites they wanted blocked from their search results] …we didn’t use that data in this change. However, we compared and it was 84 percent overlap [between sites downloaded by the Chrome blocker and downgraded by the update].
The take away here is that we should not be surprised if Google starts using the Chrome blocking data to tweak their algo’s. Make sure your website is appealing to visitors and this will be a positive for you.
On Gaming the Google Algorithms
Cutts: …our most recent algorithm does contain signals that can be gamed. If that one were 100 percent transparent, the bad guys would know how to optimize their way back into the rankings.
Singhal: There is absolutely no algorithm out there which, when published, would not be gamed.
Cutts: I have to think, I have to hope, I have to aspire, there’s some algorithm out there that we could publish as open source but couldn’t be gamed. We haven’t found it yet.
Yes, all of Google’s algorithms can be gamed. A professional Search Engine Optimization expert can use their expertise, insight and experience to help you rank higher and get 2 the Top.
Matt’s words: “The Bad Guys” are the SEO’s that do not generally adhere to Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines. Matt would call 2theTop Design one of the “Good Guys” since we try to adhere to those guidelines while we take your website 2 the Top of the Google rankings!
What’s the bottom line?
Google is trying to penalize poor quality websites and reward sites that have greater quality. They’re trying to incorporate many, many factors into what constitutes a high quality website. It’s simple: build a great looking website that engages and inspires confidence in your visitors.
The concept is pretty easy to understand. It’s “pulling it off” that’s the hard part for most businesses. 2 the Top can help.
Let me know your thoughts on the new Google updates.
About