The SEO community is predicting an imminent
Google algorithm update. Suspicion was aroused by a number of statements made by Matt Cutts at the SMX West Conference 2014 which took place in San Jose, California March 11-13, 2014. Mr. Cutts suggested at that Google was preparing Panda updates and that these updates might balance what many thought were very abrupt changes in Google’s approach. Mr. Cutts went as far as to say that the upcoming updates might even rectify issues caused by previous Panda updates which hit some websites extremely badly.
The Panda update in February 2011 was an attempt to make Google’s search results more relevant by omitting low quality sites from listings. The change had a dramatic impact on social networks and news sites, which almost universally saw a sudden increase in the number of visitors they received. There was also a parallel decrease in visitors for sites that had a large number of advertisements. A number of reports suggested around 12% of search results were impacted.
The Panda update favoured websites with fresh content that was renewed on a regular basis. It did not favour ‘evergreen’ websites where content never changed regardless of how relevant that information might be to the topic area of a website. Sites that copied other sites or produced content that wasn’t written directly for the site also lost favour, as did sites with content that wasn’t relevant to the area the website was supposed to cover. Likewise websites with errors and text problems (such as spelling mistakes) also fell by the wayside. Sites that had a strong SEO focus, such as large numbers of ‘follow’ links, also saw problems. However, Panda was updated in July 2013 and many sites recovered some of their losses. The coming update promises further gains for sites that benefitted from the last update.
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