Google recently released a new iteration of its algorithm, Panda 4.0. Panda was originally designed to ‘score’ websites on their content and user-experience.
Panda pushes websites with lower quality content down the page and rewards those with high quality content.
This latest release announced via Twitter, confirms Google’s ongoing quest for quality nirvana. This has been Panda’s reason for being since its inception in 2011.
Panda 4.0 alters the way Google identifies sites and, as a result, should be considered a major update to the algorithm.
Essentially, Google rewards sites that in turn reward visitors. If you provide quality content that delivers value you stand to benefit from the Panda changes. And if your content is overdue for a spruce up Panda 4.0 signals that the time has come to get started.
Winners and losers
Although it’s too early to define exact fallout from Panda 4.0, analysis by Searchmetrics gives us some sense of who wins and who is to lose from this latest update.
Amongst the losers are ‘aggregators’ whose ranking is heavily dependent on content from external sources. However, this is not a consistent trend.
ebay was down by 33% – not as bad as many others but given the organisation’s size and resources it really should not be on the list at all.
At this early stage we invite you to take a look some of the sites on the list and draw your own conclusions on which ones Google rewards, versus the ones it punishes.
Winners
Up 500%
Up 250%
Up 100%
Losers
Down 75%
Down 50%
Down 33%
Quality content should be the central driver for all websites. Panda 4.0 just underscores that the time to act is now.
Fatpublisher provides Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services to our clients. If you are interested in finding out about our SEO packages, please contact us.
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