Google Panda

What is Google Panda?

Google Panda Initial Release Date: February 23, 2011

The stated purpose of the Google Panda algorithm update was to reward high-quality websites and diminish the presence of low-quality websites in Google’s organic search engine results. It was also initially known as "Farmer." According to Google, Panda’s initial rollout over the course of several months affected up to 12 percent of English language search results. We've tracked 28 data updates to Panda between 2011 and 2015.

Triggers for Panda

The Panda algorithm update addressed a number of problematic phenomena in Google SERPs, including:

• Thin content - Weak pages with very little relevant or substantive text and resources, such as a set of pages describing a variety of health conditions with only a few sentences present on each page.

• Duplicate content - Copied content that appears on the Internet in more than one place. Duplicate content issues can also happen on your own website when you have multiple pages featuring the same text with little or no variation. For example, a chimney sweep company might create 10 pages, one for each city the business serves, with content that is nearly identical on all of the pages with only the city names swapped out (e.g. “We clean chimneys in Denver” on one page and “We clean chimneys in Boulder” on the next, and “We clean chimneys in Aspen” on the next).

• Low-quality content - Pages that provide little value to human readers because they lack in-depth information.

• Lack of authority/trustworthiness - Content produced by sources that are not considered definitive or verified. A Google rep stated that sites aiming to avoid Panda’s impact should work to become recognized as authorities on their topic and entities to which a human user would feel comfortable giving their credit card information.

• Content farming - Large numbers of low-quality pages, often aggregated from other websites. For example, of a content farm might be a website that employs large numbers of writers at a low wage to create short articles covering a vast variety of search engine queries, producing a body of content that lacks authority and value to readers because its core purpose is simply to gain search engine rankings for every conceivable term.

• Low-quality user-generated content (UGC) -  An example of this type of low-value User Generated Content would be a blog that publishes guest blog posts that are short, full of spelling and grammatical errors and lacking in authoritative information.

• High ad-to-content ratio - Pages made up mostly of paid advertising rather than original content. 

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• Low-quality content surrounding affiliate links - Poor content around links pointing to paid affiliate programs.

• Websites blocked by users - Sites that human users are either blocking directly in the search engine results or by using a Chrome browser extension to do so, indicating low quality.

• Content mismatching search query - Pages that "promise" to deliver relevant answers if clicked on in the search results, but then fail to do so. For example, a website page might be titled "Coupons for Whole Foods," but when clicked on, there might be no coupons or there might just be a page of ads, leading to disappointment.

How can I know if I’ve been hit by Panda?

One signal of a potential Panda penalization is a sudden drop in your website’s organic traffic or search engine rankings correlating with a known date of an algorithm update.

Image via neilpatel.com

However, it’s vital to bear in mind that many things can result in lost rankings and traffic. These include the rise of a competitor in your market (look at who is outranking you to see if someone new has moved ahead of you), manual penalties (check Google Search Console for reported issues), expected seasonal dips in consumer interest (like a ski lodge in July), or even a completely different Google update than the one you suspect (for example, Penguin instead of Panda).

When a known, named update occurs, it’s important to study industry documentation of practices being cited as involved in the update. If your loss of rankings or traffic corresponds with a known date, go through these industry lists of bad practices to discover if they are taking place on your website. Then, if you believe you’ve found a correlation between bad practices and an update, act to remedy the situation.

Still not sure if you’ve been hit by a penalty? Check out this nifty flowchart:

How to recover from Panda

In the SEO industry, Panda has been frequently cited as an update from which it can be difficult to recover. However, given that the Panda update hinged largely on website/content quality, steps for recovery generally come back to improving that quality. Remedial actions to take include:

• Abandoning content farming practices

• Overhauling website content for quality, usefulness, relevance, trustworthiness and authority

• Revising the ad/content or affiliate/content ratio so that pages are not dominated by ads or affiliate links

• Ensuring that the content of a given page is a relevant match to a user’s query

• Removing or overhauling duplicate content

• Careful vetting and editing of user-generated content and ensuring that it is original, error-free and useful to readers, where applicable

• Using the Robots noindex,nofollow command to block the indexing of duplicate or near-duplicate internal website content or other problematic elements

In sum, websites that consistently publish high-quality, original content have little to fear from this update, but if your website has engaged in problematic practices, it may have been hit at some point by Panda. From a practical, business standpoint, your best hope of avoiding Panda is to develop a brand that becomes recognized as an authority in its field and to build a website that becomes a trusted resource by dint of its excellent content.

Other facts about the Panda update

• Panda was initially rolled out separately from the core algorithm but was then integrated into it on an unconfirmed date in March 2012.

• Panda was named after Google staffer Navneet Panda.

Keep learning

• Google's Farmer/Panda Update: Analysis of Winners vs. Losers
• Real-World Panda Optimization - Whiteboard Friday
• Have We Been Wrong About Panda All Along?
• The Most Important Things We Learned About Google's Panda Algorithm

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