Google confirms Panda data refresh rolling out

[engine]

<moved from another location>

Google confirms Panda data refresh rolling out.

New Panda data refresh rolling out today: 1.2% of English queries affected.

http://twitter.com/google/statuses/293780801001230336

[edited by: tedster at 8:59 pm (utc) on Mar 5, 2013]

[Str82u]

Google confirms Panda data refresh rolling out.

Felt like that yesterday.

[superclown2]

Google confirms Panda data refresh rolling out.

Is this genuine? The link on that page is from last year.

[Sand]

Yeah, it's genuine. Check the time stamp on the tweet, not the informational post they link to.

[engine]

Yes, it's a genuine announcement. The link refers to the original history.

[rubinetto]

Google confirms Panda data refresh rolling out

Not true. That link is a joke!

[rubinetto]

Ops! Is actually true!
Google confirmation arrived.

[HuskyPup]

Ops! Is actually true!
Google confirmation arrived.

From where?

[Str82u]

From where?

The link to their Twitter account is printed in the initial post, it wasn't converted to a link.
EDIT: [twitter.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

A Googler @google
New Panda data refresh rolling out today: 1.2% of English queries
affected. Background: http://goo.gl/8Zqy1 [goo.gl]

Regarding the Background link in the twitter post (not to be confused with the link to the twitter post...

Yes, it's a genuine announcement. The link refers to the original history.

It's worth noting in all these updates that Google is continuing to link back to the May 6, 2011 Google Blog article by Amit Singhal on the kinds of signs which Google is considering when determining quality....

More guidance on building high-quality sites
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

This should be taken as a big clue. Here is a group of the kinds of questions that Google looks at. These four in particular, grouped together toward the end of the list, struck me as particularly important to think about when you evaluate your content quality...

- Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
- Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
- Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

Questions along these lines are then used to choose and evaluate sets of seed pages... and trial and error based algorithms (aka heuristic algorithms)... which are tested, refined... first, as I understand it, in the original seed set, then in a wider sample of pages, and finally incorporated into the larger Google algorithm.

[HuskyPup]

The link to their Twitter account is printed in the initial post

Oh yeah I knew that one, it was just like rubinetto had a confirmation direct from Google by email:-)

[Sand]

Have to say, this one feels good. I thought I was fully recovered before, but apparently not -- traffic is up more than double today. I hit my regular daily visit total before noon!

[Hoople]

A few older, well linked pages that were 'stale' (no update in 1-3 years) fell 1-2 pages for my top keyword phrases.

Said differently - having many times more links than my site now has lesser importance.

[zeus]

Somehow I have this feeling that not so many care anymore when they do a update or am I wrong here.

[Str82u]

traffic is up more than double today

That's something I don't like to see on the front end of algorithm updates. Our evergreen sites haven't been negatively affected since the end of summer 2012 but here's my personal observation for older "satellite" sites we never cleaned up: refreshes are about a 7 day process; First day they shoot way up because higher traffic competitors (more page 1 SERPs) get hit first allowing some of our sites to see sunlight above the page 1 fold; by mid week our sites get hit, and things normalized by the end of the 7 day cycle, generally with our sites losing a few positions or more.

The updates/refreshes that were beneficial were those when a site suffered at the beginning of the update. That may not make sense being that it's an more of an emotional observation than logical but I'm in front of the screen nearly all day, every day and see these things; whether I interpret and communicate them well is debatable.

Part of the above concept was made partly from points Matt Cutts made about the crawl process in this video [youtube.com...]

I have this feeling that not so many care anymore

Replace "care" for "worry" and that's me. It used to be like a "Whack-a-Mole" game, when we stopped making sites to pop up here and there we stopped getting whacked.

[aboshakeeb]

! , What they mean by : 1.2% of English queries affected ? what about Arabic for example ,affected too ?

[Andem]

@Sand: Congratulations.

A very old site I run is seeing some nice improvements. User metrics could be better, but backlink profile is as solid as rock and is probably unmatched in its niche. My second site (6 months old [plus 10 in development and testing]) has considerably better user experience metrics compared to 8 of my largest competitors and though traffic has increased at an unheard of rate every month since launch, we're seeing a slow down today which could mean the first period of a lower weekly average in terms of traffic.

Nevertheless, it looks to me like Pagerank may be making a comeback versus user metrics. Of course, YMMV and probably will!

[Sand]

That's something I don't like to see on the front end of algorithm updates.

Totally agreed, but I don't think this is the front end. Things have been in flux for a week now. And in recent months, Google doesn't announce that things are 'rolling out' until they're done.

I totally get where you're coming from, though. And I'm trying real hard not to count chickens. Just from every data point I can see, it's done. So I'll enjoy it as long as it lasts:)

[Sand]

@Sand: Congratulations.

Thanks!

And for the record, this site is in the same boat as yours. It's an informational site that has great content & editorial backlinks, but the traditional user metrics for search visits are horrible. Time on site and page views per visit are not good. Honestly, it's just the nature of my content & the queries that are sending me traffic. People are looking for very specific information that I provide. They find what they're looking for, read it, and leave.

Have you tried to adjust your bounce rate through asynchronous analytics tags? Basically, you just setup an imaginary event that fires at a defined interval.

When I implemented it, I learned that 75% of my visitors spend 2 minutes or more on the site (even though most only view one page per visit). To me, that's a valuable user metric that isn't measured out of the box, and it puts me at ease. I know people are engaging with my content, even if they only look at one page. Just something you might want to look at.

[darco]

Is it late confirmation by google? or new? this update fluctuation can be seen on 17-Jan-2013.

[gracealex]

Yes you are absolutely right that major fluctuation have seen from 17th Jan,but Google has announced this update yet.Strange

[Str82u]

Just from every data point I can see, it's done.

I didn't see much fluctuation last week except losing a few #1 positions starting maybe Monday the 14th and lasting for about 3 days which I could consider a tremor in the algorithmic force (actually I thought a competitor had bought links and got a temporary boost in rank); it wasn't enough to make me jump around crazy like the last time when many of us were certain something experimental happened nearly 2 weeks before the announced update.

In any event, we keep working and watching.

[Robert Charlton]

what about Arabic for example ,affected too ?

It's likely that they're rolling this out one language (or country) at a time, probably starting with the most frequently searched languages and working down.

[charlesdhan]

Hello Friends,
some keywords drop in google SERP from 17th Jan 2013, my home page and all pages safe, but main inner page not listed in SERP while keyword search.

My question is panda affect whole site r else panda can affect one page only? Please give conclusion?

[petehall]

Why do I feel like they turned up the dial on links with this update. Amazon and eBay doing well with really poor content and product range.

[helenp]

Its correct, my visits been raising and since the 17th a drop in traffic, so agree the update was on the 17th

[zeus]

I hate informational sites where you have to go to the middle or bottom of the page, where they are getting to the point of the topic, I would say 85% of all information sites, stuff there info with to much bla bla at the beginning.

[abhishekmishra]

Ooh not again...!

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Another 1.3% huh, I didn't notice a thing this time. Fixes didn't relive past hits, nada.

[jebernier]

My sites have all avoided any serious impact from the Panda & Penguin updates but they were impacted the 17th. Keyword rankings dropped off the map, although, my Google organic traffic was not impacted, actually up a bit. I'm guessing that the keywords that dropped never brought much traffic.

I've heard that links from directories could be an impact but I thought Panda was targeting Low-Quality sites. My sites have all unique content and we are considered the authority on our subject matter?