Google confirms Panda data refresh rolling out

[engine]

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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]

[indyank]

- Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?

@robert Charlton, Any idea on how they arrive at whether an article contains insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious? How do they know what is obvious for a topic and that an article has some insightful analysis or interesting information beyond the obvious? Some generic examples will help.

[Shepherd]

Any idea on how they arrive at whether an article contains insightful analysis or interesting information

As I understand it they have a group of human raters who look at a selections of webpages and answer a series of questions about said webpages. Google takes that information and tries to establish measurable properties/scores/common elements of the webpages that were rated and then takes those common properties and measures other webpages against them algorithmically. Or something like that...

[Bewenched]

Well thank goodness we've seen an increase in traffic. We've gained a 30% increase since Christmas and normally this is our slow time of the year.

[claaarky]

indyank, in my view Google are not able to tell specifically whether an article contains insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious. I think they just look at user metrics to see how people react to the page overall and that, compared to other pages, tells them where it sits in the quality scale.

User metrics reflect what people think of your page and site in general, but the decision a human comes to can be based on one of a million reasons or, more likely, a combination of many reasons.

I believe the guidelines Google produced were just attempting to highlight the many reasons why someone might not like a page or site.

[linkbuildr]

Heavily in the finance niche, 1 month old, 2 page, 50,000 links in 2 weeks sites dominating half of the sites on the first page for the biggest keywords.

[Thaparian]

User metrics reflect what people think of your page and site in general, but the decision a human comes to can be based on one of a million reasons or, more likely, a combination of many reasons.

So if your site has bad user metrics, it could be just because of bad layout, bad color combinations, not so user friendly navigation, basically poor presentation of your content.

What else Google tracks other than page views per visit, visit duration.

I'm guessing Google might also be tracking, if a user has copied text from the page, or saved the webpage, bookmarked it?

[randle]

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....

For some time now, its really more about Google looking for signs of "anti quality", identifying what they consider "low quality" site (pages) and pushing them down in the results. Thats very different than the old days of them looking for "signals of quality" and then scoring that, and pushing those sites (pages) up.

Its not a subtle difference, or an excersice in arguing semantics.

Our site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find "high-quality" sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content.

"reducing the rankings of low-quality content" = addition by subtraction. The question is does it really work.

[Gmorgan]

Seeing some big changes here. Of 100+ SEO clients, about a third have been affected. Some have jumped up pages but a handful have slipped.

The common theme is that the page Google is displaying for a result has changed. In some instances, the result now being shown as a result is actually the 3rd, 4th or even 5th most relevant according to their own site query (i.e. "putting this into Google..."example keyword" site:www.example.com)

[Wilburforce]

- 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?

That's all very well, but when the page that ticks all those boxes generates a lot of unsolicited backlinks that all use the page subject as anchor-text, Penguin finds an unnatural link pattern.

[Simsi]

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.

Agreed. All the changes hit here yesterday (22nd) rather than the 17th.

[pp46]

@zeus

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

No you are not wrong, I definitively agree.
I steadily ignore the updates (just endure them) and keep on a straight and steady line, this for the last 10 years.

Gaming Google is pointless a nonstarter and IMHO non ethical..!

I note this from the Google link/explanation above
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.fr ]

Our advice ***** not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals

That is a clear message, no?

[diberry]

Hmm, interesting. My Penguinized/Panda'd site is seeing some big improvements... but not on the keyphrases I used to do well on. Those are still down in the cellar as they have been since Penguin (and I'm guessing that's why a Panda update didn't help them). The pages benefiting most from this have not had their content changed (other than replacing stock photos with originals), but they have enjoyed a storm of social media sharing in the past few months.

[Bewenched]

Just remember peeps that there is always a bit of flux while it rolls out and in my experience it will flux hourly for a few days.

So if your site is getting hammered... good for you, but if it's slow right now take the time to get caught up on projects.

Remember .... BREATHE.

[Sand]

The pages benefiting most from this have not had their content changed (other than replacing stock photos with originals)

Interesting...that was one of the things I did as well. Most every page on my site used to have (thumbnail size) stock photos on them, just to add a little flair. But I removed them in early December, purely on account of how expensive they're getting these days.

I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that, as I've done a lot of things to my site over the last 6 months, but it's interesting that we both saw some improvements after removing them.

[Play_Bach]

Noticing a big spike from Google bot today. Highest all month.

[pp46]

In google FR no change

[indyank]

Our advice ***** not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals

That is a clear message, no?

It is not about gaming them but about trying to improve things in all manners possible. If they find certain things as more insightful and beyond the obvious, how can the act of providing such experience on your sites be considered as gaming?

[giggle]

For a key phrase that I was on page #1 for, I am now on page #6. I notice that, between me and page #1, there are 9 results for books.google.com which is absolutely no use to people searching for that key phrase.

Certainly Bing is returning much more useful results when researching, for example, diabetes.

[mirrornl]

Don't see it in all languages and countries yet

[nomis5]

there are 9 results for books.google.com

Don't know if it connected or not but I'm seeing a massive increase in book selllers (lots of Amazon etc) that have suddenly appeared for search terms where the user is unlikely to be searching for a book. The user wants red widget sites not books on red widgets. This is a very significant change in the bias of SERPS which has happened suddenly over the last few days.

Anyone else seeing this?

[nomis5]

An hour or so past the above post I;m seeing massive fluctuations in the G SERPS for my major site, like nothing I've ever, ever seen.

Pages are going up and down 40 positions or so for no apparent reason. If your site is down don't do anything for a few days, it may well pop up as number one tomorrow.

Why the fluctuations though? It doesn't make sense from my experience as a computer tester. You do a change to the algo, you wait a couple of days to analyse how it goes and then you tweak it and repeat the process. What is happening with G is testing in a live environment, it's not sensible and one day they will come a cropper.

The fundamental things in life still, most definitely, DO apply.

[HuskyPup]

It doesn't make sense from my experience as a computer tester.

But all these Gorgs are theoreticians with seemingly no experience of the real world, I honestly didn't believe they could make a bigger mess than they already have, but done it they have in a monumental royal way.

[Lisa13]

Hi :) I found this discussion through Google search LOL ;)

Just wanted to add my experience. So far I've had wonderful success seo wise and none of the updates (Penguin nor Panda) affected any sites, until this one.

For example, one site has 7 keywords I'm optimizing for. Out of those 7, all but 2 (and variations of the 2 - one word vs long-tail) completely tanked. These keywords were all on page 2 or 3. One of the two survivors never budged from page 2 (it's a brand keyword so I was very happy to finally get it to page 2) So we're talking spot #10 (because Google only has 7 results on page 1 for the term....) and spot #12

Now when I check rankings, the other terms show up in the 200-400 spots, but NOT for the URL I was optimizing for (category page) but instead for random products in the category.

The only thing I've done differently with the 2 keywords that are still doing well, was more focus - we did more link-building for those, but not an extreme amount. Never over-optimize. This is why I really don't "think" it's a back-links thing...

My question is, how did 2 survive and 5 are still floating up and down. Last night I saw one go up 122 spots, now today down 87. I'm really struggling with this. All are in the 100-400 spot range when they were all on page 2 or 3!

No critical warnings/messages in WMT either.

[Gmorgan]

"The only thing I've done differently with the 2 keywords that are still doing well, was more focus - we did more link-building for those, but not an extreme amount. Never over-optimize. This is why I really don't "think" it's a back-links thing..."

How optimised are the pages? We are finding that if you have the keyword in the URL, the title, the meta description, the main heading, the subheadings, etc (i.e. every part of the page) then it is likely that last week saw you drop for that keyword.

[Lisa13]

How optimised are the pages? We are finding that if you have the keyword in the URL, the title, the meta description, the main heading, the subheadings, etc (i.e. every part of the page) then it is likely that last week saw you drop for that keyword.

Hi there - actually, yes the keyword is in the title, the URL, and H1 tags. However, this is the case across the board with all the keywords and 2 are still where they were before all this...and interestingly enough, one keyword fell down to #393 - last night it jumped up 230 spots, for the category page again, which is what I want, not a product within the category.Until I know what the reason is, I'm afraid to do anything.

[EarWig]

This update should be called Pandoorway-Upgrade.

15 of the top 20 results for geo targetted UK searches in my niche are showing listing for multiple geo targetted dooray pages. All pages identical except Towns and Counties!

Why can't Google simply detect sites that blatantly flout their TOS?

[Lisa13]

What is going on!? Now a keyword that fell down to #393 (from 12) jumped up 230 spots last night to 163. Now it just went back down 325 spots - that is completely unnatural.

[Convergence]

What we think we are seeing is a rotation of the data centers. Don't know if this is intentional, in the respect to a mixing up of the results, or some sort of in-progress alignment.

While site:domain-name.com is far from accurate, we're seeing multiple sets throughout the day and traffic ebbs and flows based on those numbers. We've seen them as low as 1,900 pages and as many as 544K pages. Right now it's 15,900 and traffic is at a trickle...

[Probably better post for [webmasterworld.com...] - mods, please feel free to move accordingly. Thank you.]

[Lisa13]

Interesting...and very strange out of 7 keywords, 5 tanked and 2 are still where they were...

[Rick_M]

Is there a difference in monetary value for the phrases that still rank compared to those that were hit? are some terms about a product that could be bought online and others not?