Anyone who deals in the general field of websites must have heard the phrases "Panda", "Penguin" or such and such distortions. All these names are names of algorithm updates, which are very significant for changes in the organic search results on Google. Algorithm changes are made on a daily basis, but only from time to time we see changes that immediately and widely affect many websites.
At first we welcomed the update called "Panda" by the professionals. On April 24th we received another animal and it is called "Penguin". (Although Google listed it as "webspam", you can see it in the post about the algorithm change). While "Panda" It was received with great understanding by SEO people around the world and since then many actions have been carried out which are called post-Panda, "Penguin" Hit hard on many promoted sites, even the most legitimate ones. Also, a large number of sites I own that followed all Google guidelines were severely damaged by the last update that was made over 3 months ago. Since then the many actions of web promoters all over the world are mainly concerned with minimizing damages since the update. In this article we will review what is currently known about the "Panda" update. and "Penguin" update.
Panda Update
In principle, updating "panda" Hit pages that aren't necessarily spam but aren't of the highest quality either. The first and main sites affected by the update are article sites and content-based sites. Article publishing sites were the victims that were at the top of the list, mainly due to the fact that any surfer can add content to the site and there is no one talking about quality content (with no benefit for the surfer who reads the content). The Panda update was the first update from Google that mainly penalized content, "useless content" Hit many sites, so the phrase "SEO Articles" Disappeared from the world after the update. "SEO Articles" There are articles written in order to publish on article websites and have a mass of keywords in order to link from the content of the article. "Panda" update Hit all locations on the site even if only some of the pages on the site were considered "not of sufficient quality". So it was necessary to make sure that 100% of the site's pages have unique content optimized for surfers and not optimized for search engines.
Below are the dates and times when the "Panda" updates appeared. Latest (all information is collected from Google updates or updates from analysts who follow algorithm updates):
- Panda 1.0 (February 22, 2011)
- Panda 2.0 (April 11th, 2011)
- Panda 2.1 (May 10th, 2011)
- Panda 2.2 (June 16, 2011)
- Panda 2.3 (July 26, 2011)
- Panda 2.4 (August 12, 2011)
- Panda 2.5 (September 30, 2011)
- Panda 2.5.1 (October 9-13th,2011)
- Panda 3.0 (October 20, 2011)
- Panda 3.1 (November 21,2011)
- Panda 3.2 (January 18,2012)
- Panda 3.4 (March 23, 2012)
- Panda 3.5 (April 19, 2012)
- Panda 3.6 (April 27, 2012)
- Panda 3.7 (June 8, 2012)
- Panda 3.8 (June 25, 2012)
- Panda 3.9 (July 24, 2012)
Penguin Update
The "Penguin" algorithm update He came to our world on April 24 of this year. Google claimed at the time of the update that it was an update designed to harm the position of sites that violate Google's guidelines. Although in practice thousands of websites were damaged that do not necessarily pass the guidelines of Google, and thousands of high-quality websites that were intended for Internet surfers were damaged. Google Talk On the effects of the update: "Sites that were affected by the update cannot be quickly identified as spam sites, only after a thorough examination of the site and site operations. These sites perform actions that are not always defined as white hat SEO; They advocate various methods in order to bias the search results on Google".
When we examine Google's response in depth, do the phrases "white hat SEO" (Site promotion using the methods according to the guidelines) and the sentence "They advocate different methods in order to bias the search results on Google". Isn't this the same sentence?! Aren't website promotion methods aimed at biasing the search results in favor of the website we are promoting?
So what do we do after we saw that there is a decrease in traffic from Google after the end of April (ie the site was affected by the update)?
From now on the tool from Google – Google Webmaster Tools , comes into the picture strongly (could this have been Google's goal?). Using the tool, you can see messages that Google Sending for website owners if your website is suspected of spam or unethical methods for website promotion. Google reported that the "Penguin" update Hit only 3.1% of the search phrase (for comparison, "Panda" hit about 12% of the search phrase in the first update). But in practice it is a violation of many legitimate sites with a large volume of hits.
Various actions that are most important after updating "Penguin":
- General surveillance – From now on, you must check on a daily basis for updates and changes in the site's Google Webmaster Tools account. The tool allows data analysis of the site, allows receiving various messages from Google about the site, data analysis of site impressions and CTR percentages and many other elements. From now on, you must check the data and act accordingly with the promotional actions.
- link tracking – After updating "Penguin" We understand more and more that links are still an important factor but can also be extremely damaging. Check how the links to your site are displayed through Google Webmaster Tools, apparently if the site is damaged there is a problem with the structure of the links to the site. This can mean many problems such as: links from low-quality sites, too many links to the home page compared to other pages on the site, too many links under anchor text like. And there are many more components, but they are all directly adapted to the site's operations, so they cannot be guessed. Today, the work of many SEO professionals mainly deals with the analysis of the existing links to the website and how they can be adapted to the latest Google update.
- Check the website content and the construction of the internal links – If in the past SEO people simply linked from any internal content on the site to another page on the site with the anchor text It needs to be promoted, nowadays it no longer works. The field of UI (User interface) occupies the central place, and it is recommended to take a professional for medium and higher websites. The actions of the UI person directly help the website promotion actions, therefore this professional is extremely important. Today, every website promotion company has professionals from the UI field.
- Changing methods of building links to the website – Methods of distributing articles on article sites and commenting on blogs are no longer methods that will work after these updates. There is a need to build link building methods on a more "natural" basis.
Below are dates and times that "Panda" updates used to appear. Latest (all information is collected from Google updates or updates from analysts who follow algorithm updates):
- Penguin (April 24, 2012)
- Penguin 1.1 (May 25, 2012)
In order to see new algorithm updates and how they affect websites (what are the changes), SEOMoz offers a dedicated page . This page displays information about each update and how it is manifested with as detailed an explanation as possible. And an even funnier tool from SEOMoz is the MOZCAST which is a weather forecasting tool, but not of the weather but of the Google algorithm updates.